Retrieving the Shuttlecock

Retrieving the Shuttlecock, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1768, depicts the moment after a game of hanetsuki, the New Year's badminton played with feathered shuttlecocks and decorative hagoita paddles. A young woman bends or reaches to pick up a shuttlecock that has fallen short, while a companion looks on with her own paddle still in hand; the small feathered projectile, a token of new-year auspiciousness, gives the otherwise quiet scene its narrative anchor. Koryusai was at this moment producing some of his most refined early Edo bijin-ga in close dialogue with Suzuki Harunobu's full-colour nishiki-e style, and the slender, almost weightless figures of this print, with small heads and elongated bodies, reflect the dominant 1760s aesthetic that he would later remould into the more solid courtesan portraits of the Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo cycle. The hanetsuki theme is part of a wider repertoire of new-year imagery — kites, hatsumode shrine visits, kotohajime ceremonies — that Koryusai treated repeatedly and that gave Edo collectors prints suited to seasonal hanging. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 86738) is a chuban nishiki-e in soft greens, rose and indigo, with the keyblock outlines of the kimono patterns crisply preserved. The bend in the woman's posture, drawing attention to the contour of her robe, exemplifies Koryusai's ability to convert an everyday street game into an opportunity for graceful figure design and seasonal observation within the established conventions of late-1760s Edo bijin-ga. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/86738.