Jo and Uba Greeting the Rising Sun

This chuban color woodblock print, in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago and dated c. 1770/81, depicts Jo and Uba, the elderly couple of the Noh play 'Takasago' who personify long, happy marriage and conjugal devotion. Their identifying attributes are present in the standard form: the old man with a rake to gather pine needles, the old woman with a broom to sweep them, and the suggestion of the great pine of Takasago that stretches across the bays of Japan. Toyoharu has set them greeting the rising sun, an auspicious composition appropriate to New Year and to celebratory gifts. The chuban format and quieter coloring of this sheet show a side of Toyoharu's output far removed from his programmatic uki-e perspective prints: an intimate, well-mannered figural design in a classical literary register, of the sort that would have been recognised at a glance by educated Edo customers. The image demonstrates the breadth of Toyoharu's pictorial range and his fluency with conventional bijin-ga and felicitous subjects alongside the more famous experimental projects with which he is usually associated.