No. 37, from the series "That Purple Image in Magic Lantern Shows (Sono sugata yukari no utsushie)"

Designed by Utagawa Kunisada in 1842, this sheet, No. 37 from the series Sono sugata yukari no utsushie, That Purple Image in Magic Lantern Shows, draws on the late Edo fascination with the utsushi-e magic lantern, an imported optical entertainment whose painted glass slides projected shifting images onto a screen. Kunisada's title plays on yukari, lineage or association, and the chromatic emphasis on purple, the color whose name in Japanese, murasaki, immediately calls to mind the heroine of the Tale of Genji. The series thus functions as a layered mitate, with each numbered sheet pairing a contemporary figure with a literary or theatrical antecedent in the manner of slide-show transformation. By 1842 Kunisada, the future Toyokuni III, had been a leading force in Edo ukiyo-e for two decades, and his ability to push a fashionable conceit through dozens of variations made him the natural designer for an extended series of this kind. The sheet's color palette exploits the deep cool purples that Edo printers could now achieve from imported aniline-precursor pigments, set against the soft mineral grounds that distinguished the period's bijinga. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this print with its number and series title intact, enabling reconstruction of how the set fit within Kunisada's exploration of optical novelty as a metaphor for cultural memory.