Parody of Matsukaze dancing beneath Yukihira's robe

This chuban nishiki-e of about 1766 by Isoda Koryusai recasts a famous noh subject, the saltmaker Matsukaze dancing beneath the hanging robe of her departed lover Ariwara no Yukihira, as a contemporary Edo scene. The play "Matsukaze" is one of the most lyrical pieces of the noh repertoire, and the image of Matsukaze grasping at Yukihira's robe became a stock motif for Edo painters and print designers seeking classical material to repurpose as mitate-e (parody pictures). Koryusai, working as the principal Harunobu successor at the moment when the recently established nishiki-e technique was being applied to a wide range of classical subjects, treats the figure in the slim, child-scaled idiom of Suzuki Harunobu, with the same restrained palette of olive, salmon and indigo. The robe of Yukihira hangs above the dancing Matsukaze on a slender wooden frame, and the design uses the vertical line of the hanging garment as a counterweight to the curved body of the dancer below, an axial structure that anticipates Koryusai's later mastery of the hashira-e pillar print. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the careful registration and clean key-block linework of a good early-nishiki pull. The print is a useful indicator of how thoroughly Edo ukiyo-e designers of the Meiwa years were combing the classical theatre for material that could be redirected into the new commercial market for full-color woodblock prints.