Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Nijushiko), section of a sheet from the series "A Harimaze Mirror of Joruri Plays (Harimaze joruri kagami)"

Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Nijushiko), section of a sheet from Utagawa Kuniyoshi's 1854 series A Harimaze Mirror of Joruri Plays (Harimaze joruri kagami), is part of one of the more inventive formats in late Edo ukiyo-e. Harimaze prints arrange several smaller compositions on a single oban sheet so that collectors can cut them apart, paste them into albums, or display them as a kind of visual digest. Joruri kagami offered scenes from celebrated puppet and kabuki plays as miniature theatrical fragments, each with its own composition and cartouche. The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety section refers to the Joruri play Honcho nijushiko, a Chikamatsu-influenced classic that adapts the Chinese paragons into a Japanese setting and includes the famous Yashima episode with the fox-spirit Yaegaki-hime. Kuniyoshi, an Utagawa-school master best known for warrior prints, here demonstrates his ability to compress full dramatic scenes into the constrained space of a harimaze segment without losing legibility or emotional charge. The figure work retains his characteristic firm contour drawing and richly patterned costumes. Issued in 1854, the print belongs to the late-Tokugawa flowering of multi-image, anthology-like formats. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression (artworks/33447) among its Kuniyoshi holdings. The sheet illustrates the artist's range and the publishers' creative response to the saturated late-Edo market.