Ono no Komachi, from the series "Fashionable Children as the Six Immortal Poets (Furyu kodakara rokkasen)"

This Art Institute of Chicago oban, dated c. 1814/17, transforms Ono no Komachi — the lone female member of the Rokkasen and the most legendary of the six — into a young Edo girl. Komachi was the great female poet of the early Heian court, famed for her beauty, her devastating waka of love and loss, and a literary afterlife in which she ages from peerless beauty to forgotten old woman. Within the Edo mitate tradition she was the most frequently invoked Rokkasen poet, and Eizan's child here would have been read immediately by a contemporary audience as Komachi by costume, accessories, and pose. The Komachi sheet is the natural keystone of the series for Eizan's bijin-ga audience — a moment when his interest in female subjects, his fashion-magazine training of the Edo woman, and his literary mitate framework all converge in a single child's portrait.