Muraogi, from the series The False Murasaki's Rustic Genji (Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji)

Muraogi, from the series The False Murasaki's Rustic Genji (Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji), dated 1830 in the Cleveland Museum of Art catalogue, is an Edo ukiyo-e by Utagawa Kunisada produced just as Ryutei Tanehiko's serialized novel Nise Murasaki inaka Genji was beginning publication in 1829. Kunisada was the novel's principal illustrator for its entire run from 1829 to 1842, and Inaka Genji subsequently became one of the most lucrative properties in nineteenth-century Edo print culture. The series translated the Heian-period Tale of Genji into a contemporary feudal setting, with Mitsuuji as the Edo-era surrogate for Hikaru Genji and his consorts and rivals drawn from the cast of the original novel. Muraogi appears in the inaka Genji as a figure of intrigue around the Mitsuuji household, and Kunisada's portrait isolates her in a single sheet, dressed in a richly patterned kimono and rendered in the elongated bijinga manner that characterized his work in the Bunsei era. The compositional choice - a single figure close to the picture plane, with a cartouche identifying the character and the series - matches the publisher's strategy of packaging Inaka Genji content as discrete collectible sheets parallel to the ongoing book serialization. The Cleveland impression preserves the bright indigo and red palette of late Bunsei-era polychrome printing and helps document how thoroughly Kunisada's Genji subjects shaped the bijinga market of the 1830s and 1840s.