Five Musicians (Gonin bayashi)

Five Musicians (Gonin bayashi) is a 1778 woodblock print by Torii Kiyonaga, the Torii school master whose work defined Edo bijin-ga during the decade between the eras of Suzuki Harunobu and Kitagawa Utamaro. The title refers to the gonin-bayashi, the five-piece musical ensemble traditionally arrayed on the upper tier of the hina-matsuri doll display: three drummers, a flute player, and a singer or chanter, dressed in courtly costume. Rather than picturing the dolls themselves, Kiyonaga reimagines the ensemble as a tableau of fashionable young women, each taking the role of one of the five musicians and outfitted with the appropriate instrument or fan. This kind of mitate, or visual analogue, was a favored device of the period, allowing Edo bijin-ga to inflect everyday womanhood with the courtly aura of imperial ceremony. The print shows Kiyonaga's developing strengths: the figures are unified in scale and spaced with the calm rhythm that would soon become the basis of his celebrated multi-sheet prints, while the patterns of their kimono are rendered with the controlled palette of nishiki-e printing of the late 1770s. As fourth head of the Torii school, Kiyonaga drew on his training in theatrical poster design to organize the group into a coherent stage-like ensemble. The print is preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it sits among the museum's early Kiyonaga holdings, and demonstrates how he transformed festival iconography into elegant Edo beauty prints.