Love-Smitten Demons

Love-Smitten Demons, a Torii Kiyonaga print held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated to about 1777, is one of the more inventive of his early works. The image plays on the popular comic premise of fearsome creatures undone by ordinary human feelings: muscular oni, usually depicted as terrors of folklore, are shown undone by romantic longing, their menace converted into the awkward yearning normally reserved for the licensed quarters' clients. The print belongs to a tradition of humorous mitate or 'parody' prints in which classic types are recast against expectation. Kiyonaga, working within the Torii school whose long association with kabuki and signboards made it comfortable with bold figural drawing, uses strong outlines and an exaggerated physiognomy to render the demons while keeping the lettering and surrounding details restrained. As his Edo bijin-ga would later become known for restraint and grace, this earlier comic print shows how broad the Torii school's repertoire was in the late 1770s, and how Kiyonaga could shift register from elegant beauty to fantastical comedy without losing legibility of pose and gesture. The composition reads almost like a small stage, and one feels behind it the workshop's long experience translating theater into print. The Art Institute of Chicago's record of the sheet underscores Kiyonaga's range and his readiness to engage with the parodic vein that ran through Edo culture alongside its more idealized images.