Kogo no Tsubone and Minamoto no Nakakuni

Suzuki Harunobu's "Kogo no Tsubone and Minamoto no Nakakuni," dated about 1760 in the Art Institute of Chicago's records, takes its subject from the medieval Tale of the Heike: Kogo no Tsubone, a court musician beloved of the emperor and forced into hiding, is sought out by the imperial envoy Nakakuni, who finds her by the sound of her koto on a moonlit autumn night at Sagano. Like much of Harunobu's classical material, the scene is handled in the mitate-e mode, where the figures are recast in the slender body type and contemporary dress that define his chuban bijin-ga. The composition typically pairs Nakakuni's listening pose with Kogo's koto and quiet interior, the moon implied rather than spelled out. As one of the foundational practitioners of nishiki-e, the polychrome "brocade print" technique that revolutionized Edo ukiyo-e in the mid-1760s, Suzuki Harunobu used multiple registered woodblocks to layer the soft pinks, jades, and grays that suit a midnight encounter. The chuban format keeps the scene intimate, encouraging close reading of the figures' poses and the symbolic koto. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the impression among its Harunobu holdings, where it stands as a model of how the artist could compress one of the most lyrical episodes of the Heike into a single, atmospheric polychrome print.