The Bon Festival in the Sixth Month, from the series "Fashionable Twelve Months (Furyu juni setsu)"

From Koryusai's series Furyu juni setsu (Fashionable Twelve Months), held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to about 1770 to 1772, this chuban print represents the sixth month with the Bon festival, the summer observance honoring ancestral spirits. The festival, celebrated across Japan with bon-odori dancing, paper lanterns, and visits to family graves, gave designers of seasonal series an opportunity to evoke the mid-summer atmosphere of cool evening light, lantern paper, and yukata-clad figures. Koryusai's design situates a fashionable young woman within the festival's quiet domestic dimension, the ceremonial elements suggested rather than spelled out. The juni-setsu (twelve months) series is one of several month-cycles that Koryusai produced during this prolific period of the early 1770s, and the survival of multiple sheets in major museum collections suggests the commercial success of the format.