Tiger, from the series "Fashionable Children with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Furyu kodomo juni shi)"
- Date:
- c. 1773
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; chuban
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Tiger, from Isoda Koryusai's series Fashionable Children with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Furyu kodomo juni shi), dated 1768 and held at the Art Institute of Chicago, belongs to one of the artist's most charming conceptual projects: pairing children with the animals of the East Asian zodiac. The series turned a familiar calendrical sequence into a visual celebration of child-play, in which each sheet matched a young boy or girl with the appropriate zodiacal beast in a contemporary Edo setting. The Tiger sheet pairs a child with the stylized tiger that signifies the Year of the Tiger, the animal rendered with the curling stripes and forceful posture that East Asian printmakers had long associated with the species. Children's prints sat alongside Koryusai's adult Edo bijin-ga as a parallel domain of his output, sharing the same attention to costume, gesture, and seasonal context. The conceit of furyu — fashionable, of the moment — bound the series to the same updating impulse that would soon power his Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo courtesan parade. By dressing the child in elegant contemporary robes and showing them playing with or alongside a printed tiger, Koryusai blended didactic content (familiarity with the zodiac) and decorative pleasure into a single accessible package. Such series were popular gifts and decorative purchases in mid-Meiwa Edo, and Koryusai's command of figure scale, palette balance, and animal characterization made his contributions especially desirable. The Tiger sheet preserves an exemplary fusion of zodiac iconography and Edo child genre under Koryusai's hand.
Tiger, from the series "Fashionable Children with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Furyu kodomo juni shi)" was created by Isoda Koryūsai (礒田湖龍斎) in c. 1773.
Tiger, from the series "Fashionable Children with the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac (Furyu kodomo juni shi)" depicts children.
