A woman from Ohara leading an ox, from the series "Five Annual Festivals for the Katsushika Ciricle (Katsushika gosekku)"

From the 1822 series Five Annual Festivals for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushika gosekku), this shikishiban surimono by Katsushika Taito II shows an oharame—a woman from the village of Ohara, north of Kyoto—leading an ox. Oharame were famous in Edo-period imagery for their distinctive folk costume and for their work bringing firewood and produce into the capital. The series was commissioned by the Katsushika kyoka-ren, the poetry circle closely associated with the Katsushika art lineage, and each sheet linked one of the five seasonal festivals (gosekku) to a figural subject drawn from rural or urban Japanese life. The Art Institute of Chicago holds this example along with several other sheets from the same series, allowing the group to be studied as a single project. Taito II's drawing emphasizes the patterned textile of the oharame's wrapped kimono and the heavy, deliberate weight of the ox, balancing the two forms across the small near-square sheet. The surimono format permitted finely controlled color and metallic pigments that the museum's impression preserves.