Sojo Henjo, from the series "Fashionable Children as the Six Immortal Poets (Furyu kodakara rokkasen)"

This Art Institute of Chicago oban, dated c. 1814/17, transforms Sojo Henjo — the courtier-turned-monk Yoshimine no Munesada (816-890), abbot of Kazan-ji and a renowned waka poet of the Kokin era — into an Edo child. The Henjo sheet rounds out the six-print set with the other monk-poet, Kisen Hoshi, and Eizan likely modulates the costume to suggest monkish robes while keeping the pose and palette bright. As a designer Eizan was operating in a long lineage of Rokkasen mitate: artists from the seventeenth century onward had recast the six poets as women, as actors, and as historical figures, and the Furyu kodakara rokkasen series belongs comfortably within that tradition while bringing it a particular Kikukawa-school sweetness. The full set is one of the better-documented Eizan series in the Art Institute's collection.