Ebisu, from the series "The Seven Gods of Good Luck in Modern Life (Tosei Shichi Fukujin)"

Suzuki Harunobu's "Ebisu," from the series "The Seven Gods of Good Luck in Modern Life (Tosei Shichi Fukujin)," dated 1764 in the Art Institute of Chicago's records, is a quintessential example of the artist's mitate-e wit. Ebisu, the smiling deity of fishermen, merchants, and good fortune traditionally shown with a sea bream and fishing rod, is reimagined here as a fashionable figure of 1760s Edo, the cult of the Seven Gods of Good Luck (Shichi Fukujin) being transposed into the everyday urban present that the series title announces with the word tosei, "modern life." The slender body type, the small, demure features, and the carefully patterned robes mark this firmly as chuban bijin-ga, even though the subject is nominally a god. As one of the foundational practitioners of nishiki-e, the full-color "brocade print" technique that revolutionized Edo ukiyo-e in the mid-1760s, Suzuki Harunobu employed multiple registered woodblocks to achieve the soft, harmonized palette that distinguishes the series. The chuban format keeps Ebisu intimate and approachable, suitable for collectors building a complete set of Seven Gods. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the impression as part of its substantial Harunobu holdings, where it serves as a benchmark example of how mitate-e thinking allowed Edo audiences to delight in the simultaneous presence of sacred tradition and contemporary fashion within a single sheet.