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

This color woodblock print by Katsukawa Shunsho, dated about 1767, is part of the series Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures, Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari, in which each sheet is labelled with a syllable of the Japanese phonetic order. The syllable Me marks this episode drawn from the classical Heian-period poetic narrative Ise Monogatari, a text long associated with the courtier-poet Ariwara no Narihira and treasured by readers of the Edo period as a wellspring of romantic and seasonal poetry. Shunsho transposes the courtly subject into the visual language of contemporary Edo ukiyo-e: figures wear updated robes, their gestures suggest the polite drama of an urban audience, and the composition unfolds with the kind of intimate framing favored by the early nishiki-e generation. The Katsukawa school, with which Shunsho was already closely identified, would soon transform yakusha-e by introducing individualised actor likenesses, but in this series Shunsho demonstrates his command of a different register, drawing on classical literary themes that flattered an educated audience. The sheet is held by the Art Institute of Chicago and contributes to the museum's documentation of the Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari cycle, illustrating how Shunsho and his collaborators bridged elite literary culture with the technologies and tastes of late eighteenth-century Edo print publishing.