Fashionable Six Immortal Poets (Furyu rokkasen)

Utagawa Toyokuni I's "Fashionable Six Immortal Poets (Fūryū Rokkasen)" reworks one of classical Japanese literature's foundational lists — the Rokkasen, six poets singled out by Ki no Tsurayuki in the tenth-century Kokin Wakashū preface — through the visual language of fashionable Edo townswomen. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the print as part of its Toyokuni collection. In a fūryū mitate of the Rokkasen, each immortal poet is replaced by a contemporary beauty, and the resulting composition flatters buyers by assuming they can identify both the original poet and the modern surrogate. Although Utagawa Toyokuni is best known as the founding force of the Utagawa school's dominance in kabuki actor prints — [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) being the trademark of his lineage within Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) — series such as this Rokkasen demonstrate his fluency in the literary game that an educated Edo audience expected. The set extends a tradition of mitate that runs through Suzuki Harunobu, Kitagawa Utamaro, and others, and Toyokuni's distinctive contribution is the crispness of his contour and the way his bijin maintain the dignity of the classical reference while wearing the textiles of his own decade. The Art Institute's catalogue documents the print without speculation. For collectors and students of Edo ukiyo-e, the Fūryū Rokkasen is a notable Toyokuni venture into literary parody and a reminder that the Utagawa school's reach extended from kabuki actor prints into classical poetics with equal confidence.