Episode 73 (Nanajusan dan), from the series "Tales of Ise for the Asakusa Group (Asakusagawa Ise Monogatari)"

Episode 73 (Nanajusan dan), from the series Tales of Ise for the Asakusa Group (Asakusagawa Ise Monogatari), is a [shikishiban](/glossary/shikishiban) [surimono](/glossary/surimono) in the Art Institute of Chicago dated to around 1812. It comes from a series in which Shunman illustrated episodes from the Ise monogatari - the tenth-century anthology of poetic tales centered on the legendary lover-poet Ariwara no Narihira - for the Asakusa kyoka circle, the same group for which he produced the Asakusagawa Tsurezuregusa series. The Ise monogatari was one of the most foundational classical texts in Japanese literature and a favorite source for poetic illustration across the centuries; for late-Edo kyoka poets, who delighted in classical reference, an illustrated Ise series was both a homage to the original and an opportunity for new commentary. Episode 73 of the Tales of Ise would have been illustrated in Shunman's characteristic spare, suggestive manner, the figures or landscape distilled into a single decisive image and the kyoka inscriptions above offering poetic commentary on the original waka. The 1812 dating places the print in the late phase of Shunman's career, when his work was at its most refined and his collaboration with the Asakusa group was at its most sustained. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding of this and related Tales of Ise sheets allows the project to be studied alongside the Tsurezuregusa series, the two together forming the most ambitious classical-illustration projects in Shunman's surimono output.