Ono no Komachi Praying for Rain

This Art Institute of Chicago hashira-e (pillar print), dated to about 1771, depicts the classical Heian poet Ono no Komachi in the famous episode of her rain-praying poem at Shinsen'en garden, when she is said to have ended a drought through the power of waka verse. Koryusai recasts the legendary figure as a contemporary Edo beauty in pastel kimono, transposing the Heian story into the mitate (parody) idiom that dominated his bijin-ga of the early 1770s. The tall, narrow format, roughly 28 by 5 inches, was Koryusai's signature compositional problem, and he solves it here by stacking the figure into a vertical column, her body and trailing robes lifting the eye continuously upward through the print. The Komachi cycle was a favored subject for Koryusai, who would return to it in his Furyu Nana Komachi (Seven Fashionable Komachi) series in chuban format, and this hashira-e shows the early flowering of his interest in literary heroines as vehicles for fashion-system bijin-ga. The pale color register, subtle gradation, and slim, willowy figure all show how closely Koryusai was still working in Harunobu's lyrical idiom in this transitional moment before Harunobu's death.