Fishing, from the series "A Set of Ten Beauties in Flowerlike Styles (Enshoku hana fuzoku ju awase)"

Fishing, from the series A Set of Ten Beauties in Flowerlike Styles (Enshoku hana fuzoku ju awase), is a 1777 Torii Kiyonaga design that pairs a fashionable woman with the specific activity of fishing — likely with rod or net at a streamside or bridge — within a ten-print survey of female pursuits. The Enshoku hana fuzoku ju awase project is one of several 1770s comparative (awase) sets in which Kiyonaga organized the depiction of contemporary women around themed activities, an editorial structure that gave the prints a documentary as well as aesthetic interest. Fishing was a recognized leisure activity for Edo townswomen of certain ranks, and ukiyo-e periodically returned to it as a means of placing a beauty in an outdoor setting that allowed for fuller compositional invention than the interior tableaux of the toilette. Kiyonaga's figural style at 1777 is moving steadily toward the increased scale that would define his early-1780s mature manner, and the integration of the figure with a fully realized natural setting prefigures the Sumida and Yoshiwara compositions of the following decade. The project also illustrates how the Torii school under his leadership pursued large multi-sheet bijin-ga sets alongside its older kabuki-signboard activity. The Art Institute of Chicago records this 1777 design among its Enshoku hana fuzoku holdings.