"Nu": Crossing Tatsuta, from the series "Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari)"

Katsukawa Shunsho designed this color woodblock print about 1767 as part of the series Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures, Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari. The syllable Nu marks an episode connected to the celebrated literary motif of crossing the Tatsuta River, a place name long associated in Japanese poetry with autumn maples and the season's swift current of leaves. The original Ise Monogatari preserves verses tied to Tatsuta among its most quoted passages, and Edo audiences would have recognised the reference immediately. Shunsho translates the courtly subject into the contemporary mode of Edo ukiyo-e: figures appear in updated robes, the setting is suggested rather than archaeologically reconstructed, and the print's compositional elegance flatters readers of the classical canon. Although Shunsho is best known today for the radical realism his Katsukawa school brought to yakusha-e portraits of kabuki actors, the Ise Monogatari series shows him working comfortably within a literary, allusive register. Full-color nishiki-e printing was still a recent innovation when the series appeared, and the project demonstrated how the new technology could elevate classical themes to the level of a fashionable luxury good. The print belongs to the Art Institute of Chicago, where it contributes to the museum's substantial holdings of Shunsho's early designs.