Parody of Liu Bei (J: Gentoku) Visiting Zhuge Liang (J: Komei) in Wind and Snow (Gentoku fusetsu ni Komei o tazureru)

Designed by Utagawa Kunisada in 1839 and preserved at the Art Institute of Chicago, this mitate parody depicts the celebrated Three Kingdoms episode in which Liu Bei, known in Japanese as Gentoku, visits the recluse Zhuge Liang, called Komei, through wind and snow to win him as strategist. Mitate, the practice of overlaying a classical or Chinese story with contemporary Edo figures and costume, was a favorite device of Kunisada and his rivals in the mature decades of Edo ukiyo-e, and here it gives the artist a chance to translate the moral weight of the Chinese source into the visual idiom of his yakusha-e and bijin practice. Liu Bei is rendered as a contemporary figure, while Zhuge Liang's hut becomes a hermit's lodge styled with the textures Edo readers associated with reclusive scholarship. Wind-driven snow streaks the composition in white printed lines, and the figures are wrapped in heavy travelling garments that let Kunisada exploit deep blue and slate-grey pigments to evoke the cold. The artist's command of group composition, the kind of multi-figure stagecraft refined across decades of actor prints, gives this mitate sheet the rhythmic clarity of an opening scene. As is typical for Kunisada in this period, before his assumption of the Toyokuni III name, the parody allowed Edo audiences to enjoy both the Chinese narrative and the contemporary celebrity overtones simultaneously.