Minamoto no Yoshitsune (Ushiwaka Maru) Playing a Flute

This Art Institute of Chicago surimono depicts Minamoto no Yoshitsune in his youth - when he was known as Ushiwaka-maru - playing a flute, one of the most beloved episodes in Japanese heroic legend. As a boy at Kurama temple, Ushiwaka was said to play his flute beautifully in the moonlit grounds, his musical accomplishment standing in eloquent contrast to the martial destiny that awaited him as the great Genpei War commander Minamoto no Yoshitsune. The subject combines the romance of the young aristocratic hero with the cultivated arts that defined elite identity in classical Japan, making it an ideal mitate-e subject for kyoka poetry circles steeped in both military legend and refined cultural accomplishment. Hokkei would have rendered the figure with the elegant elongation characteristic of his bijin-ga style - the slender boy, the curving flute, the moonlit setting all calibrated to the shikishiban format and to the kyoka verses that would have completed the design's meaning. The Art Institute's impression preserves the refined printing characteristic of Hokkei's privately commissioned surimono.