The Poet Sugawara Michizane

The Poet Sugawara Michizane is an early 1760s hosoban color woodblock print in the mizu-e technique, held by the Art Institute of Chicago. Sugawara no Michizane (845-903) was a Heian-period scholar, poet, and statesman of such standing that after his death in exile he was deified as Tenjin, the patron god of learning and calligraphy, worshipped at shrines throughout Japan. Michizane was an obligatory subject for any artist - like Shigemasa - who claimed credentials in calligraphy and classical letters. Here Shigemasa portrays the poet as a dignified standing or seated figure, treated with the restrained palette of mizu-e. The genre of poet-pictures (kasen-e) reached back to medieval times, but in the eighteenth century these subjects were increasingly absorbed into the print market, where they appealed to buyers who wanted to display their familiarity with literature alongside their taste for floating-world fashion. The hosoban format and mizu-e palette place the print in the immediate prelude to the nishiki-e revolution of 1765. Shigemasa would return to Michizane later in his career, including in the Sugawara Michizane Crossing to China design also in the Art Institute's holdings.