The Eighth Month at Hagi Temple (Hachigatsu Hagidera), from the series "Famous Places in Edo in the Twelve Months (Edo meisho junigatsu)"

The Eighth Month at Hagi Temple (Hachigatsu Hagidera) belongs to Isoda Koryusai's 1768 series Famous Places in Edo in the Twelve Months (Edo meisho junigatsu), a calendrical tour of the city in which each sheet associates one month with a celebrated locale and a fashionable scene of urban leisure. The Eighth Month is paired with Hagi Temple — most likely Ryuganji, popularly known as Hagidera for its profuse plantings of bush clover that bloomed at the start of autumn and drew large crowds of Edo townspeople to enjoy the flowers. Koryusai stages a small group of figures, including elegantly dressed women in lighter early-autumn kosode, viewing or pausing among the hagi blossoms, the sprays of small purple-pink flowers articulated with characteristic 1760s nishiki-e refinement. The composition embeds Edo bijin-ga within the meisho tradition of guidebooks and travel prints, treating temple gardens as both seasonal stage and fashionable backdrop. This early experiment in the meisho format anticipates the way Koryusai would later weld place and beauty in his Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo courtesan plates, where Yoshiwara houses provide named settings for the women they showcase. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 21290) is a chuban colour woodblock in soft pinks, indigos and yellow ochre, with bokashi sky and finely cut keyblock contours typical of Koryusai's Meiwa-era output. As both a calendrical print and a topographic record of a specific Edo locale, it represents the artist's lasting interest in tying the city's social geography to the visual culture of the floating world. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/21290.