Yatsuhashi, Eight-Platform Bridge

Yatsuhashi, Eight-Platform Bridge by Suzuki Harunobu draws on one of classical Japanese literature's most beloved scenes, the moment in the Tale of Ise when the courtier-poet Ariwara no Narihira pauses at a Mikawa marsh whose eight zigzagging plank bridges crisscross a field of irises. Harunobu transforms the canonical episode into a piece of Edo bijin-ga, replacing the exiled poet with stylish contemporary figures whose modern dress signals the practice of mitate, in which present-day fashion is layered over a classical reference. The bridge planks angle across the sheet in long diagonals, leading the eye through clusters of irises whose blues and purples were finely graded by the nishiki-e team of designer, block carver, and printer. Such layered color became possible only after the technical breakthroughs Suzuki Harunobu helped to establish around 1765, when fully registered polychrome prints replaced the two- and three-block color schemes that had dominated earlier ukiyo-e. The print works simultaneously as a literary allusion and a fashion plate: educated viewers recognized the Yatsuhashi setting and the irises that prompted Narihira's acrostic poem on longing, while less learned customers could simply admire the geometry of the bridge and the cool seasonal mood. By inserting young women into a scene traditionally occupied by a male poet, Harunobu typifies the way Edo bijin-ga repurposed the canon for an urban, commercial audience. The impression is in the Art Institute of Chicago and reproduced via ukiyo-e.org.