Fun'ya no Yasuhide, from the series The Six Poets Represented by Modern Children (Tosei kodomo rokkasen)

Designed around 1800, Kitagawa Utamaro's ukiyo-e print of Fun'ya no Yasuhide belongs to the series The Six Poets Represented by Modern Children (Tosei kodomo rokkasen). The Rokkasen are the six classical waka poets canonized in the preface to the tenth-century anthology Kokinshu, and recasting them as contemporary Edo children was a fashionable mitate, or parody by analogy, that flattered viewers' literary education while celebrating childhood as a subject of ukiyo-e. Yasuhide, a poet remembered for verses on the wind that scattered autumn leaves, is here personified by a child whose pose, costume, and attendant attributes hint at his eighth-century namesake. Utamaro's drawing applies the elegant calligraphic outline of his bijin-ga to the proportions of childhood, producing figures whose seriousness is gently undercut by their youth. The pale ground of unprinted paper isolates the figure so that costume, color, and gesture register clearly, while a poem cartouche supplies the literary reference. Such series demonstrate how Utamaro and his publishers could position ukiyo-e as a vehicle for educated play, equally rooted in classical poetry and in Edo's lively visual culture. The Harvard Art Museums preserves this impression (object 208070), where it joins other prints from the Tosei kodomo rokkasen.