An Elegant Parody of the Seven Komachis (Fûryû yatsushi nana Komachi) : Kayoi

An Elegant Parody of the Seven Komachis (Furyu yatsushi nana Komachi): Kayoi, recorded on ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago collection, belongs to Suzuki Harunobu's celebrated mitate-e series that retells the legendary episodes from the life of the ninth-century poet Ono no Komachi through contemporary Edo beauties. The Kayoi episode refers to the story of Fukakusa no Shosho, who, according to legend, visited Komachi nightly for ninety-nine days in the hope of winning her favor, only to die on the eve of the hundredth visit. In Harunobu's elegant translation, the legendary figures become fashionable Edo young people, and the courtly tragedy is filtered through the visual idiom of nishiki-e and Edo bijin-ga. As one of the principal architects of the full-color woodblock revolution in 1765, Suzuki Harunobu used the multi-block technique to give such mitate prints a level of refinement that allowed them to participate genuinely in the classical literary tradition rather than merely reference it. The yatsushi convention, in which an old story is re-dressed in modern clothing, was a favorite vehicle for kyoka poets and their patrons, and Harunobu's Komachi series exemplifies the genre at its most sophisticated. By placing a slender Edo beauty in the role of the legendary poet, the print invites the viewer to recognize the underlying narrative, to enjoy the contemporary updating, and to admire the technical control of the woodblock medium all at once.