Bishop Henjo

Bishop Henjo is a Suzuki Harunobu print documented through ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago. The design participates in a long ukiyo-e tradition of treating the Six Immortal Poets (Rokkasen) of the early Heian court as subjects for elegant parody. Bishop Henjo (Henjo Sojo) was a ninth-century court poet who took religious orders, and he is conventionally shown as a Buddhist cleric reflecting on the impermanence of beauty in the world. Harunobu, like many ukiyo-e designers, took the canonical figure and transposed him into a contemporary Edo context, often pairing the poet-monk with a young woman whose attractiveness comments wryly on his celebrated rejection of worldly attachments. The print belongs to the larger group of mitate-e (parody pictures) through which Harunobu and his contemporaries refracted classical poetry, history, and Buddhist hagiography through the lens of the floating world. The medium itself is the polychrome nishiki-e Harunobu helped pioneer in the mid-1760s. Multiple separately carved color blocks bring up to ten or more pigments into registration on heavy hosho paper, so that the robes of monk and townswoman alike, and the small accessories that locate them in a specific Edo setting, can be rendered with precision. The image is available through ukiyo-e.org at ukiyo-e.org/image/aic/1283_1175243 as Bishop Henjo by Suzuki Harunobu, in the Art Institute of Chicago.