Courtesans at Leisure from the series The Six Immortal Poets

Held by the Cleveland Museum of Art and dated to the early 1780s, this Katsukawa Shunzan color woodblock print depicts courtesans at leisure as part of the series The Six Immortal Poets (Rokkasen). The Rokkasen — Ariwara no Narihira, Ono no Komachi, Bishop Henjō, Kisen Hōshi, Funya no Yasuhide, and Ōtomo no Kuronushi — were the six waka poets identified in the preface to the early-tenth-century imperial anthology Kokin Wakashū as the most distinguished of the generation preceding the anthology's compilation, and the group had become one of the standard organizing conceits of [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) by the late eighteenth century. Mitate-Rokkasen prints applied the classical poetic framework to contemporary Yoshiwara figures: an elegant courtesan or group of courtesans would be cast as the modern equivalent of one of the six historical poets, allowing designers and viewers to participate in a multi-layered allusion that flattered both the contemporary subject and the classical reference. Shunzan's design participates in this tradition with multiple figures in a leisure setting, demonstrating his accommodation to the Torii Kiyonaga manner of bijin-ga group composition that dominated Edo women's prints during the early 1780s. The Cleveland Museum of Art's holding contributes to the documented record of Shunzan's bijin-ga output during the period of his career most strongly influenced by Kiyonaga.