The Evening Bell of the Nun (Bikuni no bansho), from the series "Eight Views of Fashionable Human Relations (Furyu jinrin mitate hakkei)"

Around 1765 Isoda Koryusai designed this chuban nishiki-e for the series "Furyu jinrin mitate hakkei" (Eight Views of Fashionable Human Relations), one of the many mitate-e (parody picture) sets in which Edo ukiyo-e artists transposed the classical Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang, originally a Chinese landscape cycle, onto the modern urban world of the licensed quarters, teahouses and merchant residences. The sheet titled "Bikuni no bansho" (The Evening Bell of the Nun) maps the famous "Evening Bell at Mii Temple" view onto a domestic encounter involving a kanjin bikuni, a wandering nun who solicited alms while reciting Buddhist verses and was a stock figure in Edo street life. Koryusai, working as a Harunobu successor in the moment immediately after the 1765 nishiki-e revolution, treats the subject with Harunobu's slender figure type, restrained palette and the gentle visual wit that defines mitate bijin-ga of the Meiwa era. The Art Institute of Chicago impression preserves the soft pinks, blues and ochres that mark the earliest wave of full-color Edo ukiyo-e printing, when the technique was still treated as a luxury novelty. The series is a useful early example of Koryusai's interest in classical reference as a structuring device for groups of bijin-ga, a strategy he would later extend to his pattern-book projects of the 1770s.