Parody of the Third Princess and Kashiwagi: “Chapter 50: A Hut in the Eastern Provinces”

This 1858 print by Utagawa Kunisada parodies a celebrated episode from "The Tale of Genji" - the encounter between the Third Princess (Onna San no Miya) and Kashiwagi, the courtier whose obsession with her drives the late chapters of Murasaki Shikibu's classic. The sheet is one of many late-Edo mitate that translated classical literature into contemporary Edo fashion and milieu; the inscription invoking "Chapter 50: A Hut in the Eastern Provinces" likely refers to a structuring conceit borrowed from Ryūtei Tanehiko's wildly popular novel "Nise Murasaki inaka Genji," which Kunisada illustrated and which gave rise to a vast Edo ukiyo-e cottage industry. Such designs flattered townspeople viewers by treating their wardrobe and surroundings as worthy stand-ins for Heian aristocracy. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves this impression (accession 55914). The work shows the late Kunisada (Toyokuni III) deploying his mature bijin-ga vocabulary in service of literary mitate, sustaining the Genji craze that he had helped ignite two decades earlier. It is a useful index of how Edo ukiyo-e mediated between classical canon and contemporary popular culture, recasting court romance as urban style.