Shirabyoshi Dancer in Asazuma Boat (Asazuma-bune), from an untitled series of landscapes

"Shirabyoshi Dancer in Asazuma Boat (Asazuma-bune)" is an oban-format color woodblock print of about 1830-1834 by Utagawa Kunisada, from an untitled series of landscapes, held in the Art Institute of Chicago. The subject of the Asazuma-bune, the boat from Asazuma, is one of the great mitate themes of classical Japanese poetry and Noh theater. The original Asazuma-bune was a boat from which female entertainers along the shores of Lake Biwa solicited customers; in Noh and later visual culture, the image of a shirabyoshi dancer (a classical female performer who danced in male court attire) standing in a small boat became an icon of melancholy elegance and the pathos of the floating world. Kunisada's series uses this and other classical themes as poetic underlays to contemporary scenes, embedding bijin-ga figures into landscape compositions. The shirabyoshi-on-the-boat subject combines a beautiful female figure (typically dressed in the eboshi cap and white robes of the classical dancer) with a softly receding lakeside landscape. Stylistically the print belongs to the early-1830s phase when Kunisada was deepening his engagement with mitate-e and landscape, partly in response to the contemporary rise of landscape masters like Hokusai and Hiroshige. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding preserves the sheet from this untitled series, a relatively rare example of Kunisada's contribution to the landscape-and-figure tradition that lent the bijin-ga genre new pictorial breadth.