Parody of a daimyo procession

Six of twelve sheets from Toyohiro's Parody of a Daimyo Procession, a long horizontal composition that mocks (or politely transposes) the formal procession of a feudal lord by replacing the customary samurai retinue with a parade of fashionable women or other unexpected substitutions. The mitate (parody) tradition was a central pleasure of Edo print culture, allowing designers and audiences to play with the conventions of high status and ceremonial display from a townsman's perspective. The twelve-sheet length is ambitious by any standard and shows Toyohiro working at scale, with the kind of figure-pattern repetition that the procession theme demanded. The Art Institute of Chicago dates the impression to circa 1805-1807; the related sheets are catalogued under the accession numbers 1928.391-396.