Courting Komachi (Kayoi Komachi), from the series Seven Fashionable Figures of Ono no Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi yatushi sugata-e)

Courting Komachi (Kayoi Komachi), from the series Seven Fashionable Figures of Ono no Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi yatushi sugata-e), dated 1787 in Art Institute of Chicago records, draws on one of the most resonant cycles in Japanese poetic tradition. The Heian-period poet Ono no Komachi was the subject of a celebrated set of seven episodes, the nana Komachi, retold in no theatre and visual art; Kayoi Komachi commemorates the lover who courts her across one hundred nights. Utagawa Toyokuni reimagines the episode as a furyu, or up-to-the-minute, design, dressing his protagonist in current fashion and placing her in poses that read both as classical mitate and as bijin-ga of his own time. The series structure allows him to think across the seven episodes as a coordinated cycle, with each sheet exploring a different mood and visual problem. The print exemplifies a key strength of late eighteenth-century Edo ukiyo-e: its capacity to absorb classical literature into the urban visual present without abandoning the seriousness of the original references. Although Toyokuni is best known for yakusha-e, designs like this one show how his work also helped sustain the literary culture of the period in popular form. The Art Institute of Chicago records the sheet as Toyokuni I, preserving it as a key example of his engagement with the Komachi cycle and with the broader furyu mitate tradition that gave so much energy to late eighteenth-century print design.