Going to the Theater

Going to the Theater, a 1765 chuban-format print by Suzuki Harunobu in the Art Institute of Chicago, captures one of the most enjoyable rituals of Edo's urban life through the lens of the new polychrome nishiki-e medium that the artist had just helped to inaugurate. Kabuki theaters in the Saruwaka-machi and surrounding districts were among the most fashionable destinations of mid-eighteenth-century Edo, and the journey to the playhouse was itself a small social occasion, with patrons dressing carefully, hiring palanquins or walking through familiar streets, and sometimes meeting friends along the way. Harunobu's design shows one or more figures making their way toward the theater, dressed with the discreet finesse that signals an outing of consequence. The slender bodies and small, gently inclined heads of his bijin are deployed here in motion rather than at rest, the print becoming a quiet narrative of urban anticipation. As one of the chuban bijin-ga from the foundational year of nishiki-e, the design uses its expanded color resources without ostentation, registering kimono patterns and accessories with crisp precision. Within Edo ukiyo-e, Suzuki Harunobu's contribution to the iconography of theatergoing women is significant: he detached the experience from the theatrical stage itself, finding its emotional core in the approach rather than the performance.