An Elegant Parody of the Eight Scenary of Edo, The Evening Rain at Nihonzutsumi

An Elegant Parody of the Eight Scenery of Edo: The Evening Rain at Nihonzutsumi is a Suzuki Harunobu print recorded through ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago's collection. The design belongs to one of his most influential conceits: a contemporary, often domestic mitate (elegant parody) of the celebrated Eight Views of Xiao and Xiang, a set of Chinese landscape themes that had become a standard touchstone for East Asian poetry and painting. Harunobu's series transposes the classical "Evening Rain" topos to Nihonzutsumi, the embankment that ran north toward the Yoshiwara, so that the rain falling at sunset becomes an Edo-specific landscape framing a moment from the floating world. The print is a fine example of his treatment of nishiki-e as a vehicle for layered cultural reference. The slender figure or figures who move under the rain on Nihonzutsumi are dressed and posed in the bijin-ga style he had helped define, while the muted palette and the soft, almost dampened atmosphere of the sheet evoke the misty grays of the Chinese model. By giving an Edo townscape and its inhabitants the apparatus of classical landscape, Harunobu offered his patrons the pleasure of recognizing both the high source and the local target. The impression is accessible through ukiyo-e.org at ukiyo-e.org/image/aic/88962_428135 under the title An Elegant Parody of the Eight Scenery of Edo: The Evening Rain at Nihonzutsumi by Suzuki Harunobu.