Playing the Flute

Playing the Flute, recorded on ukiyo-e.org from the Art Institute of Chicago collection, captures the lyrical, music-infused atmosphere that Suzuki Harunobu so often evoked in his interior scenes. A slender young figure holds a transverse flute to her lips, her attention concentrated entirely on the instrument, while the surrounding space is reduced to the spare suggestion of an Edo parlor. The motif of a young woman playing the flute, the koto, or the shamisen was a staple of Edo bijin-ga, used both as a fashion vignette and as an emblem of accomplishment, and Suzuki Harunobu treated it with particular sensitivity. By 1765 he had become the central figure in the new nishiki-e full-color technique, and prints of this kind show his mature use of the medium: the soft pinks of skin, the leaf green of the obi, and the pale ochres of the background are aligned with the precision that the multi-block method made possible, while the doll-like proportions of the figure are unmistakably his own. The flute itself carries a long set of associations in Japanese poetry, ranging from courtly music to the autumnal melancholy of the wandering monk, and Harunobu draws gently on those echoes without insisting on any single narrative. The result is a quiet, mood-driven sheet that invites the viewer to imagine the music we cannot hear and to occupy the contemplative space of the player.