'Shoki lowering a demon on a rope to deliver a love-letter to a washer woman'

'Shoki lowering a demon on a rope to deliver a love-letter to a washer woman', a Kitagawa Utamaro design held by the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a striking example of his use of mitate to combine folklore and Edo bijin-ga. Shoki, the legendary Chinese demon queller, was typically depicted in ukiyo-e and painting as a stern warrior banishing oni; in this print Utamaro upends the convention, casting Shoki and his captive demon as comic accomplices in a romantic errand. From above, Shoki lowers the demon on a rope into the everyday space of a washerwoman, the captured imp clutching a love letter to be delivered. The conceit allows Utamaro to set a fearsome figure into a wholly domestic Edo bijin-ga environment, contrasting muscular folkloric bodies with the rounded grace of a woman at her chores. As ukiyo-e, the print plays on the popular shokia exorcist iconography of fifth-month boys' day rituals while turning the protector into an inadvertent matchmaker. Utamaro's drawing distinguishes clearly between the supernatural figures and the unsuspecting washerwoman, both in line weight and in posture, and his composition uses the vertical drop of the rope to bind upper and lower zones of the design. For collectors of Kitagawa Utamaro and admirers of mitate-e, the Victoria and Albert Museum impression preserves a sharply witty example of how he transformed traditional iconography into commentary on Edo love and labor.