"To": Sumida River, Musashi and Shimosa Provinces, from the series "Tales of Ise in Fashionable Brocade Pictures (Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari)"

This Katsukawa Shunsho design, issued around 1767 as part of the series Furyu nishiki-e Ise monogatari, illustrates the famous Sumida River episode from the classical Tales of Ise, in which the exiled courtier-poet Ariwara no Narihira and his companions ask the name of an unfamiliar white bird and learn it is called miyakodori, the capital bird, prompting Narihira's elegiac poem about his longing for the capital. Shunsho's sheet, keyed to the syllable to in the iroha sequence, transposes the classical scene into Edo period figures dressed in contemporary fashions, employing the mitate convention through which ukiyo-e artists routinely reimagined courtly literature in modern guise. The Sumida River setting was particularly resonant for Edo viewers, whose city sat on the same river referenced in Narihira's poem. Although the Katsukawa school is best remembered for yakusha-e, Shunsho's bijinga and literary subjects, including this Tales of Ise series, demonstrate the range of his late 1760s output and his engagement with the broader Edo ukiyo-e fashion print market alongside contemporaries such as Suzuki Harunobu. The series as a whole illustrates the era's enthusiasm for sophisticated literary games made accessible to a popular audience through fashionable contemporary imagery. This impression is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it contributes to a comprehensive picture of Shunsho's career beyond the kabuki theater and supports ongoing study of the dynamic interplay between classical literature and ukiyo-e printmaking.