"Ko," from the series "Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari)"

Plate Ko from Katsukawa Shunsho's series Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari), held in the Art Institute of Chicago, belongs to the late 1760s and to the late stage of the iroha-ordered set. Each plate of the series adapts an episode of the tenth-century Ise monogatari into the furyu manner of mid-Edo ukiyo-e, the figures redressed in contemporary kimono and the settings updated to recognizable interiors of the period. The series is one of Shunsho's notable early ventures in nishiki-e, the full-color brocade printing technique that Suzuki Harunobu had brought to fluency in 1765 and that designers across Edo were now exploring at full capacity. Katsukawa school fame rested chiefly on Shunsho's yakusha-e, but the Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari demonstrates his command of the classical literary register and his skill with the bijin idiom that the Ise tales required. The iroha syllabary ordering encouraged collectors to acquire the full set, and the surviving plates remain among the most prized examples of Shunsho's Edo ukiyo-e work outside the actor genre. The Art Institute of Chicago holds an exceptionally strong run of plates from the series, and study of the suite as a whole reveals the consistency of compositional thinking and the breadth of literary reference Shunsho brought to his early career.