The Farmer (No) from the series Beauties Illustrating the Four Social Classes (Adesugata shi no ko sho)

The Farmer (No), from the series Beauties Illustrating the Four Social Classes (Adesugata shi no ko sho), is a color woodblock print designed by Torii Kiyonaga in 1774. The series substitutes fashionable Edo women for the orthodox four classes—samurai, farmer, artisan, merchant—of Confucian social theory, lending its bijin-ga subjects an air of pleasingly serious learning while drawing attention to costume, gesture, and accessory. The Farmer sheet outfits its bijin with allusions to country life: perhaps a basket, a sickle, a sun hat, or the particular cut and weave of rustic-looking garments, here rendered in the polished idiom expected of an Edo print rather than the rougher textures of actual agricultural dress. As a designer working within the Torii school of woodblock artists, Kiyonaga uses the conceit to display his command of the elongated, statuesque figure type that would soon dominate Edo bijin-ga, and to show how thoroughly an urban audience preferred the idea of the countryside to its reality. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, places the print within the mid-1770s output when Kiyonaga's mature manner was crystallizing. The palette is gentle, with cool blues, warm browns, and patterned greens set against the blank sheet. For modern viewers, the sheet illustrates Edo's playful relationship with the Confucian hierarchy: the established order is acknowledged, even celebrated, but each social role is filtered through the same paradigm of feminine fashionable elegance.