Descending Geese in the Archery Gallery (Yokyuba no Rakugan)

Descending Geese in the Archery Gallery (Yokyuba no Rakugan), dating to the 1770s, is a hosoban color woodblock print, trimmed, held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The title parodies one of the canonical Eight Views topics, "descending geese over a sandbar" (heisha rakugan), by substituting the contemporary urban setting of a yokyuba - a popular archery range where Edo townspeople, particularly young men, gathered to shoot at targets and flirt with the women who served as attendants. The "descending geese" of the title refer punningly to the arrows in flight as well as to the conventional waterfowl of the classical scene. Yokyuba were ubiquitous in eighteenth-century Edo and were a common subject of genre painting and print. The mitate device - mapping the classical Chinese landscape canon onto the urban entertainment economy of Edo - was central to Shigemasa's literary print practice. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression, though trimmed, preserves the wit of the composition and its dialogue with the Eight Views tradition.