Fleeing from the Samurai

Fleeing from the Samurai is a Keisai Eisen surimono in the Art Institute of Chicago, recorded with a date of 1801. The print belongs to the narrative wing of Edo ukiyo-e surimono — the sheets that, instead of arranging still-life objects, picture a brief but vivid story drawn from classical literature, kabuki, or folklore. Eisen stages the scene at a moment of pursuit: a figure, often a young woman or a low-ranking attendant, hurries through landscape or interior space while an armed samurai presses in from the side. The unbalanced composition, with diagonals carrying weight toward the upper corner, allows Eisen to compress an entire dramatic episode into a single sheet, and the kyoka verses inscribed across the top reframe the chase in the playful, ironic register characteristic of Edo poetry circles. Eisen's handling of the figures is more emphatic than in his contemporary bijin-ga: the samurai's sleeve and sword scabbard are drawn with broad, decisive lines, while the fleeing figure's kimono trails in long, anxious curves. Color is restrained — characteristic of surimono, where embossing, metallic pigments, and selective karazuri carry as much visual interest as the printed inks. Although Eisen is most often categorized as a specialist in fashionable women, prints like this demonstrate his fluency with action subjects and theatrical narrative, traits he would later carry into book illustration and landscape series. As a privately printed work commissioned by an Edo poetry club, the sheet also documents the social ecosystem in which ukiyo-e flourished: artists, poets, carvers, and printers cooperating on small editions for circulation among connoisseurs.