Young Woman with a Caged Monkey (Calendar Print for New Year 1776)

Katsukawa Shunsho designed this calendar print, or egoyomi, around 1771 in anticipation of the New Year of 1776, presenting a young woman holding a caged monkey to mark the auspicious zodiac symbol of the coming year. Calendar prints were a specialized genre within Edo ukiyo-e, embedding the lengths of the long and short months for the coming year into the image's decorative patterning and circulated primarily as gifts among connoisseurs and members of the poetry circles that commissioned them. The 1776 cycle fell under the sign of the monkey, and Shunsho organizes his composition around this zodiac reference, with the woman's elegantly patterned robes balancing the playful caged animal as a charming seasonal motif. Although best known for yakusha-e and the founding of the Katsukawa school, Shunsho engaged the bijinga and calendar print genres throughout his career, demonstrating the range of his artistic output beyond actor portraiture. The egoyomi tradition supported some of the most technically demanding printmaking of the eighteenth century, as private commissions allowed artists and publishers to invest in elaborate color registration, embossing, and metallic pigments unavailable in commercial work. This impression is held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The print documents Shunsho's contributions to Edo's sophisticated calendar-print culture and offers a refined example of how zodiac symbolism, bijinga conventions, and the practical function of date-keeping converged within a single visually arresting design.