Gonchunagon Atsutada / Mitate sanjurokkasen no uchi

Gonchūnagon Atsutada / Mitate sanjūrokkasen no uchi is an undated woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada from a series titled 'A mitate of the Thirty-six Immortal Poets,' which uses the classical anthology of poet portraits — the sanjūrokkasen — as a frame for contemporary figures drawn from kabuki and Edo street life. Fujiwara no Atsutada, holding the court rank of gon chūnagon (provisional middle counsellor), was a tenth-century Heian poet famous for the love waka included in the Hyakunin Isshu and in the Thirty-six Immortal Poets canon. The mitate format — pairing a classical figure with a parallel modern subject — was central to late Edo ukiyo-e, and the Utagawa school used it heavily as both a literary game and a censorship workaround, since classical cartouches gave learned cover to what was effectively yakusha-e or bijin-ga. Kunisada designs the print so the poem and the poet's name sit in a cartouche at the top while the body of the sheet is occupied by a contemporary figure whose costume, crest and posture an Edo viewer would have read as a specific kabuki actor in a current role. The figural type follows his mature manner: long oval face, narrow eyes, firm and slightly heavy black contour, mineral reds and indigos overprinted on patterned silk. The impression is held in the British Museum's collection and is accessible through the ukiyo-e.org aggregation, which preserves the artist attribution and the series title even where the precise publisher and date remain matters for catalogue work.