Watching the Game

Suzuki Harunobu's 1761 print Watching the Game gathers two or more young figures around a board game in a quiet domestic interior, exemplifying the genre of chuban bijin-ga that he was refining in the years leading up to the 1765 advent of full-color nishiki-e. The diversion may be go, sugoroku, or another popular pastime of Edo parlors, and Harunobu treats the moment with the contemplative stillness typical of his mature style. One figure leans forward, fully absorbed in the play, while another observes from the side, hand poised or eyes narrowed in study. The narrow tatami space, the angle of a sliding screen, and the careful pattern of the participants' kimono are arranged to direct the eye toward the board itself, making the act of watching as much the subject of the print as the game. Harunobu often turned to scenes of leisure and quiet sociability to construct a vision of urban womanhood that was idealized, intimate, and infused with classical reference, and this work belongs squarely to that program. Likely produced in connection with the privately printed series and luxurious calendar prints that the poet patrons of Edo commissioned, the sheet would have rewarded recipients with its careful design and its layered references to longer literary traditions of game-playing as metaphor. Now held by the Art Institute of Chicago, the print invites a slow reading of glances and gestures, illustrating Suzuki Harunobu's distinctive contribution to mid-eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e.