Sugawara of the Tsuruya dreaming of Daikoku

Sugawara of the Tsuruya Dreaming of Daikoku, an Isoda Koryusai design of 1773 in the Art Institute of Chicago, plays on one of the most familiar New Year traditions of Edo: the hatsuyume, or first dream of the year, was considered an omen for fortune to come, and dreams of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune were especially auspicious. Koryusai shows the courtesan Sugawara of the Tsuruya house asleep, with the figure of Daikoku, god of wealth, hovering above her on a cloud, his mallet and bale of rice rendered in crisp outline. The print belongs to the strand of Edo bijin-ga that intertwines Yoshiwara identity with classical and folk subject matter, a strategy at which Koryusai excelled in the early 1770s. He neither subordinates the deity to the beauty nor allows the iconography to overwhelm the portrait: Sugawara's profile, the angle of her pillow, the precise weave of her bedclothes all assert that this is a documentary portrait of a particular courtesan in a particular house, even as the upper register tips into the comic-allegorical register that mitate-e cultivated. By 1773 Koryusai was at the height of his Yoshiwara series production, two years before Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo would consolidate his approach into a methodical fashion chronicle. The Art Institute identifies the impression as a chuban-format nishiki-e and places it within Koryusai's prolific dialogue between portraiture and felicitous imagery, a niche he developed more fully than any other ukiyo-e designer of the post-Harunobu decade. The print rewards the same close looking it asks of its courtesan-subject, who must read her own auspicious dream as a sign of good fortune for the new year.