The Fifth Month, a Set of Three (Gogatsu sambukutsui), from the series "Twelve Months by the Twin Brushes of Toyohiro and Toyokuni (Toyohiro Toyokuni ryoga juni ko)"

Utagawa Toyokuni I created The Fifth Month (Gogatsu sambukutsui) as one half of the celebrated collaboration Twelve Months by the Twin Brushes of Toyohiro and Toyokuni (Toyohiro Toyokuni ryoga juni ko), a landmark project in Edo ukiyo-e publishing. Although best known today for yakusha-e or kabuki actor prints, Toyokuni here turns to the bijin-ga tradition, depicting elegant women engaged in seasonal pursuits associated with the fifth lunar month. The series paired Toyokuni's lively, theater-tinged figural style with the quieter classicism of his Utagawa school colleague Utagawa Toyohiro, allowing collectors and connoisseurs to compare the two leading pupils of Utagawa Toyoharu within a single set. The Fifth Month traditionally evokes Boys' Day, irises, and rituals of purification, and Toyokuni's composition draws on these associations through dress, accessories, and gesture. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves this impression, whose carefully aligned color blocks and sharp keylines testify to the technical accomplishment of late-eighteenth-century Edo woodblock printing. Works from this series demonstrate Toyokuni's range beyond the theater district and his fluent absorption of contemporary fashion plates that had been pioneered by designers such as Kitagawa Utamaro. The triptych format also showcases Toyokuni I's compositional control across multiple sheets, a skill that would prove central to the multi-panel actor scenes he later produced. As an Utagawa school collaboration, the print stands among the most ambitious bijin-ga projects of the 1790s and a key reference point for any student of Edo ukiyo-e.