Priest Saigyo Contemplating Mount Fuji

Priest Saigyo Contemplating Mount Fuji, dating to the 1770s, is a hashira-e (pillar-print) color woodblock print held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The poet-priest Saigyo (1118-1190) was one of the most beloved figures in Japanese literary tradition - a former samurai who became a Buddhist monk and wandered the country composing waka of profound, melancholy beauty. His most famous poems and the legends gathered around him were repeatedly illustrated, and his contemplation of Mount Fuji on his travels became an iconic emblem of poetic and religious seeking. The hashira-e (pillar-picture) format is a tall, very narrow print designed to be mounted on the wooden pillars of an Edo townhouse interior. The format demanded vertical compositions and disciplined draftsmanship to fit the figure into the slender column; Shigemasa's solution gives Saigyo the foreground in monk's robes with the cone of Fuji rising at the upper margin. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding of this hashira-e is an important record of Shigemasa working in the specialized format that flourished in the late eighteenth century before falling out of fashion.