"Re": The Imperial Huntsman, from the series "Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari)"

Designed by Katsukawa Shunsho around 1767, this print belongs to the series Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures, Furyu Nishiki-e Ise Monogatari, in which the syllables of the Japanese phonetic order are linked to episodes from the classical narrative Ise Monogatari. The syllable Re identifies the episode of the Imperial Huntsman, drawing on a passage in which the protagonist Narihira, serving as an envoy to the Ise Shrine, encounters the priestess of the shrine and exchanges veiled poems with her under the cover of an imperial hunt. Shunsho stages the scene in the visual language of mid-Edo ukiyo-e, with contemporary robes and a refined decorative ground that emphasises poetic mood over historical reconstruction. Full-color nishiki-e printing, then a relatively recent invention, gave the design its sophisticated palette and patterned textiles. Although Shunsho would soon transform yakusha-e through the rise of the Katsukawa school, the Ise Monogatari cycle attests to his comfort with classical themes that appealed to literate patrons. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it forms part of an extensive Shunsho holding and contributes to scholarly understanding of how Edo designers reframed canonical Heian poetry within the technologies and tastes of the eighteenth-century commercial print industry.