Women Representing the 108 Heroes of the Suikoden, "Saishin"

This Edo ukiyo-e print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), "Saishin," comes from the series Women Representing the 108 Heroes of the Suikoden and is preserved in the Harvard Art Museums (object 207255). The series, Fūzoku onna Suikoden hyaku hachi nin no uchi, is one of Kuniyoshi's most characteristic mitate projects, applying the convention of parody-allusion to the heroes of the Chinese novel Shuihu zhuan, whose Japanese reception Kuniyoshi himself had decisively shaped a generation earlier. His Tsūzoku Suihhōden gōketsu hyakuhachinin no hitori prints of the late 1820s established him as the foremost master of warrior prints, depicting the tattooed outlaws of the novel as muscular, dynamic heroes and helping launch the elaborate body-tattoo styles for which late Edo subcultures became famous. By recasting each of those 108 heroes as a contemporary Japanese woman, the present series performs a witty double move: it preserves the cultural prestige of the original literary cycle while transposing it into the domestic and fashionable world of mid-nineteenth-century Edo. The figure of Saishin in this sheet appears in elegant dress, identified through a cartouche bearing the corresponding character's name. As elsewhere in the series, Kuniyoshi's confident draftsmanship and pattern-rich treatment of textiles give the image both decorative immediacy and a clear connection to his earlier warrior imagery. The work documents the continuing influence of the Suikoden across genres within Edo ukiyo-e and Kuniyoshi's central role in shaping that influence.