"Ne": Brine Carriers, from the series "Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari)"

This color woodblock print, designed by Katsukawa Shunsho about 1767, belongs to the series Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures, Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari. The syllable Ne identifies the episode of the Brine Carriers, drawing on the long poetic tradition in Japan of saltmaking women on the seashore as figures of labor, longing, and seasonal poignancy. Shunsho casts the literary subject in the contemporary mode of Edo ukiyo-e, with stylish figures in current dress and a setting suggested by restrained shoreline motifs rather than detailed topography. Newly available full-color nishiki-e printing techniques permitted his publisher to register textured robes, soft water grounds, and a refined seasonal palette. Although Shunsho would soon make his name as the leader of the Katsukawa school, whose innovations transformed yakusha-e portraiture of kabuki actors, the Ise Monogatari cycle reveals his sympathy with classical literary themes and his ability to make the poetic past feel fashionable for an urban audience. The print is held in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, where it forms part of a documented sequence from the series and contributes to scholarly understanding of how Edo designers transformed elite poetic material into the visual common currency of the period through new commercial print technologies.