Kiritsubo, No. 1 from the series "Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Cards (Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta)"

Kiritsubo, No. 1 from the series Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Cards (Murasaki Shikibu Genji karuta), dated 1857, is a mitate Genji woodblock print by Utagawa Toyokuni in the Art Institute of Chicago. Kiritsubo is the opening chapter of Murasaki Shikibu's eleventh-century Tale of Genji, named for the imperial consort of Prince Genji's father, and it served as the first card in countless Edo and Meiji adaptations of the Genji cycle into game and print formats. The series adapts the Genji chapter sequence into a contemporary nineteenth-century kabuki idiom in the manner that Utagawa Kunisada (who carried the Toyokuni name in this period) and his Utagawa school colleagues had popularized as Nise Murasaki Inaka Genji-derived prints earlier in the century. The composition layers classical literary reference, courtly costume, and the recognizable figural conventions of mid-nineteenth-century Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), producing a multi-vocal print that worked simultaneously as classical homage, theatrical citation, and game-card image. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the design with full series title and chapter attribution through its catalogue. As a documented 1857 work the print belongs to the great wave of Genji-themed Utagawa-school production that linked the school's [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) tradition to the longer history of Japanese literary painting.