Parody of an Imperial Carriage Scene

Parody of an Imperial Carriage Scene, dated 1793 and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a quintessential mitate-e by Kitagawa Utamaro, in which classical imagery is rewritten as a scene of contemporary Edo women. The starting point is the gosho-guruma, the ox-drawn carriage of Heian court life that figures in poetry, the Tale of Genji, and the Tales of Ise. In Utamaro's redesign, the figures who surround or occupy the carriage are not Heian aristocrats but townswomen and geisha of his own day, in fashionable late-eighteenth-century coiffures and kimono. The juxtaposition allows him to flatter his audience's classical literacy while elevating contemporary Edo bijin-ga subjects to the dignity of court characters. Stylistically, the print exhibits his mature ukiyo-e vocabulary: confident, supple line; flattened spatial planes; restrained color punctuated by patterned silk; and an emphasis on small psychological gestures. As a parody print, it reflects the broader Kansei taste for sophisticated wit shared between artist, publisher, kyoka poets, and the knowing viewers who collected such designs.