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

This color woodblock print, designed by Katsukawa Shunsho around 1767, 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 paired with individual episodes from the classical poetic narrative Ise Monogatari. The syllable Ro is keyed here to a scene associated with seaweed, drawing on the layered imagery of the seashore that runs through the original text. Shunsho stages the literary subject in the visual idiom of Edo ukiyo-e: stylised figures in updated dress occupy a carefully composed setting, with restrained color and crisp outline emphasising elegance over narrative detail. The early nishiki-e technology of full-color printing, then only a few years old, allowed Shunsho and his publisher to render decorative robes and atmospheric grounds with new subtlety. The print belongs to the same period in which Shunsho was establishing the foundations of the Katsukawa school, whose actor portraits would soon transform yakusha-e. Within the Ise Monogatari series, however, his attention is focused on classical themes that flattered literate buyers conversant with Heian poetry. The sheet is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it forms part of a broader holding documenting Shunsho's contributions to the printed reinterpretation of classical Japanese literature during the late eighteenth century.