Eight Indoor Scenes (Zashiki Hakkei): A Folding Fan-A Clear Day (Ôgi no seiran)

Eight Indoor Scenes (Zashiki Hakkei): A Folding Fan-A Clear Day (Ogi no seiran), recorded on ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago collection, belongs to Suzuki Harunobu's witty mitate-e series in which the Chinese Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers are translated into eight scenes from the Edo parlor. The original Seiran (Clear Day after a Storm) episode depicted mountains emerging into clear air after a passing squall; Harunobu replaces the mountain panorama with a young woman opening and waving a folding fan, the parted slats standing in for the parting clouds. As an early production within the nishiki-e era that Suzuki Harunobu helped inaugurate in 1765, the print displays the refined registration and tactile surface effects that would soon become the medium's hallmarks. The Zashiki hakkei series was commissioned for the privately published calendar prints (e-goyomi) circulated among the kyoka poetry circles of Edo, and its conceit depends entirely on a viewer educated enough to recognize the Chinese source and amused enough to enjoy its domestication. As a defining figure in Edo bijin-ga, Suzuki Harunobu used mitate to argue that the city's young women, going about their cultivated domestic routines, were the appropriate modern carriers of an ancient literary tradition. The folding fan, an object simultaneously elegant and functional, becomes a perfect emblem of that translation.