The Ninth Month (Choyo), from the series "A Fashionable Parody of the Five Festivals (Furyu yatsushi gosekku)"

This 1771 print by Isoda Koryusai represents the Ninth Month (Choyo) from the series A Fashionable Parody of the Five Festivals (Furyu yatsushi gosekku), catalogued by the Art Institute of Chicago under artwork 21367. Choyo, the chrysanthemum festival, was traditionally observed on the ninth day of the ninth month and was associated with longevity, the appreciation of chrysanthemums, and the drinking of chrysanthemum sake. In the yatsushi mode that Koryusai exploits here, the original courtly or seasonal subject is recast in the dress and setting of the contemporary pleasure quarter, transforming the festival into a vehicle for Edo bijin-ga. The figures on the sheet appear as fashionable women of the floating world whose costumes and accessories quietly reference the chrysanthemum, allowing the print to function on two registers at once: as an elegant calendar of the festivals and as an advertisement for the latest patterns in robes and obis. This dual function aligns the design with the documentary aims of Koryusai's later Hinagata Wakana, which expanded the principle of naming and displaying current fashion into a long-running series. The Art Institute's catalogue preserves the series title, the festival reference, and the attribution to Koryusai, all of which anchor the print within the designer's mature 1770s output and within the broader practice of yatsushi parody that animated Edo printmaking in this decade.