Ki no Tsurayuki / Mitate sanjurokkasen no uchi

From the same Mitate sanjurokkasen no uchi series, Utagawa Toyokuni I (1769-1825) here pairs the classical poet Ki no Tsurayuki (ca. 872-945) with a contemporary subject in a mitate-style composition characteristic of Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e). Ki no Tsurayuki is among the most consequential figures in Japanese literary history: principal compiler of the Kokin wakashū (905), the first imperial waka anthology, and author of its preface, the Kanajo, which is the foundational document of Japanese poetic theory. He is also celebrated for the Tosa nikki (Tosa Diary), an early example of literary prose in vernacular Japanese. To pair so weighty a literary ancestor with a contemporary kabuki actor or beauty was the very point of mitate: to claim the dignity of classical reference for the floating world, while inviting the viewer to enjoy the deflationary humor of the analogy. Toyokuni's design integrates the poem text with the figure's costume and gesture so that text and image converse rather than simply illustrate. The Utagawa school's commercial success in such hybrid literary-popular genres depended on a remarkable mid-Edo readership that could navigate both classical court culture and the contemporary theater, often within a single page. The impression is documented through ukiyo-e.org from a British Museum holding, where the systematic acquisition of Japanese prints in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries established one of the world's foremost Utagawa-school survey collections.