A Parody

Suzuki Harunobu's A Parody, recorded on ukiyo-e.org from an Art Institute of Chicago impression, exemplifies the artist's love of mitate, the visual parody in which classical, legendary, or canonical scenes are restaged using contemporary Edo figures. In Harunobu's hands, such parodies were not crude joke prints but cultivated games for educated viewers, who could be expected to recognize the source behind the stylish surface. The composition presents Edo bijin-ga subjects, idealized young women or youths in elegant garments, arranged in a way that quietly mimics a known prototype, perhaps drawn from classical literature, theatre, or earlier painting. The pleasure lies in noticing the misalignment between the dignified original and the modern stand-ins, who occupy the same compositional roles while bringing the fashions and manners of the eighteenth-century city. Harunobu's signature handling, small oval faces, narrow eyes, slender proportions, and softly outlined drapery, is fully present, as is the kind of restrained polychrome palette that he helped to establish through the nishiki-e revolution of 1765. The print thus illustrates how ukiyo-e woodblock printing under Suzuki Harunobu became a medium for sustained visual wit, weaving together literary memory and current urban style. As recorded on ukiyo-e.org from an Art Institute of Chicago impression, the sheet remains accessible to modern viewers as an example of the cultivated parodies that made Harunobu's work so prized by contemporary collectors.