Oshikochi no Mitsune / Mitate sanjurokkasen no uchi

Oshikochi no Mitsune was a tenth-century court poet whose verses, collected in the imperial Kokin wakashu, focused on autumn flowers, dew and the bittersweet endings of evening. The poet's reputation as one of the Thirty-Six Immortals of Poetry made him an obvious candidate for Utagawa Kunisada's mitate series, Mitate sanjurokkasen no uchi, in which thirty-six classical poets are matched with contemporary kabuki actors or beauties. As elsewhere in the set, Kunisada gives the sheet over to a full-length figure in the foreground while a poem-card cartouche carries one of Mitsune's anthologised waka. The pairing functions on at least two levels: the classical reference flatters the literate Edo viewer who recognises poet and poem, and the modern figure brings the print into the visual culture of the moment, allowing buyers to read it as both yakusha-e and bijinga. By the date of issue Kunisada had inherited the Toyokuni name and stood at the head of the Utagawa school. His mature Edo ukiyo-e style is on full display here: a dense, surface-saturating brocade of textiles, an unambiguous facial type, and the calm vertical compositional sense that distinguishes his series prints from his more crowded triptychs. The British Museum impression is documented and reproduced through ukiyo-e.org. Image and bibliographic data are courtesy of ukiyo-e.org.