「千代寿」 「商」「はん昌」

From the series Chiyo Kotobuki (Congratulations of a Thousand Generations), this sheet represents the merchant class (商, shō), with the inscription 'Hanshō' suggesting commercial prosperity. The Chiyo Kotobuki series addresses the four traditional social classes — samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant — within a celebratory, auspicious register. Merchant-class subjects in nineteenth-century prints often depicted prosperous townspeople (chōnin) in well-appointed interiors or with emblems of trade. Kyosai's approach would characteristically inflect such genre conventions with wit: the merchant's prosperity implied through attributes of commerce rendered with the fluency of a painter who trained in both academic and popular visual traditions.