Evening Glow at Seta (Seta sekisho), from the series "Fashionable Eight Views of Omi (Furyu Omi hakkei)"

This Art Institute of Chicago oban, dated c. 1814/17, presents Seta-no-yuyake (Evening Glow at Seta) from Eizan's "Fashionable Eight Views of Omi (Furyu Omi hakkei)." The Eight Views of Omi were the eight canonical landscape scenes of Lake Biwa, originally established in classical Chinese aesthetics as the Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang and naturalized into Japanese poetic geography from the medieval period onward. Seta, the southern outlet of Lake Biwa, is associated with the famous wooden bridge of Seta and with the setting sun; the evening-glow scene is among the most painterly of the eight. Eizan transposes the landscape onto a bijin-ga subject — a fashionable woman whose pose, robes, or accessories evoke the place. The Furyu Omi hakkei project is among the more sustained Eizan series and survives in multiple sheets at the Art Institute, including this Seta scene and its companions for Katada and Yabase.