Kiritsubo, No. 1 from the series "Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Cards (Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta)"

Utagawa Kunisada designed this print, Kiritsubo, No. 1 from the series Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Cards, Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta, in 1857 under the Toyokuni III name. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the impression. Kiritsubo is the opening chapter of the Tale of Genji, named for the Paulownia Court where the emperor's beloved consort, the hero Genji's mother, lives and dies, and Kunisada uses the karuta card conceit to give each of the fifty-four chapters its own sheet keyed to a poetic emblem. By 1857 he was the senior figure of the Utagawa school and the unquestioned doyen of Edo ukiyo-e, producing dozens of Genji series across his late career. The composition combines a bijinga-style figure with a smaller pictorial cartouche or vignette evoking the chapter's signature image, and the printed colors, deep purples, gentle ochres, controlled inserts of red, are tuned for the literary classical register rather than the loud street-stall palette of his actor prints. The series belongs to the wide post-1830s vogue for Genji mitate that had begun with the illustrated novel Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji and never fully subsided. The Art Institute's catalogue preserves the series title and the chapter number, securing the print's place within Kunisada's vast late-career engagement with the classical canon.