Funya no Yasuhide, Two Women in a Gusty Autumn Landscape, from the series "Rokkasen (The Six Immortal Poets)"

Katsukawa Shunsho's 'Funya no Yasuhide, Two Women in a Gusty Autumn Landscape' belongs to his 'Rokkasen' (Six Immortal Poets) series, a mitate cycle in which the canonical poets of the early Heian anthology 'Kokin Wakashu' are translated into contemporary Edo subjects. Funya no Yasuhide, one of the Six Immortal Poets, was traditionally associated with autumn winds, drawing on his famous poem in which the mountain wind is said to wither leaves. Shunsho transposes that classical poetic conceit into an Edo scene of two women caught in a gusty autumn landscape, their robes whipped sideways and their hair tugged by the wind. This kind of mitate, in which classical poetry is reimagined through the bodies and dress of contemporary women, was central to the visual culture of mid-1760s Edo ukiyo-e and assumes a literate viewer alert to the layered relationship between source poem and pictorial transposition. The print also represents the Katsukawa school's serious engagement with bijin-ga at a moment when Suzuki Harunobu's nishiki-e (full-color) prints were transforming the genre, and Shunsho's response shows him absorbing the new color technology and applying it to a refined poetic theme. Held in the Art Institute of Chicago's collection, the work stands as a key example of Shunsho's contribution to the mitate tradition and demonstrates the Katsukawa school's capacity to move between yakusha-e, classical literary allusion, and seasonal bijin-ga within a single, sophisticated Edo print culture.