The Poet Nakamaro (Abe no Nakamaro), from the series "One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets (Hyakunin isshu no uchi)"

The Poet Nakamaro (Abe no Nakamaro), from the series One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, is part of Suzuki Harunobu's 1758 set of illustrations for the Hyakunin Isshu anthology. Abe no Nakamaro was an eighth-century courtier sent as an envoy to Tang China; his poem in the anthology recalls the moon over Mount Mikasa near Kasuga shrine, recited as he gazed up at the same moon from foreign soil. Harunobu, characteristic of his Edo bijin-ga practice, replaces the historical envoy with an elegant contemporary figure who stands beneath a bright disk of moon, the poetic memory transformed into fashionable Edo imagery. The sheet is built around the cool simplicity of the moon and the warmer tones of the figure's robes, a contrast that the careful color registration of nishiki-e allowed Harunobu's workshop to achieve cleanly. The series as a whole gave Edo townspeople a way to refresh their knowledge of poems they had memorized as children, repackaged in the fashions of the 1750s. Through the device of mitate, Suzuki Harunobu transformed the Hyakunin Isshu from a literary text into a visual playground, where personal fashion sense became a form of literary engagement. The print remains both a meditation on longing for home and an elegant exercise in nishiki-e style. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, no. 44201.