The Ten Great Disciples of Confucius (Komon jittetsu), from the series "A Set of Ten Famous Numbers for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushikaren meisu juban)"

The Ten Great Disciples of Confucius (Komon jittetsu), a 1823 [surimono](/glossary/surimono) by Yashima Gakutei in the Art Institute of Chicago, is the climactic sheet of the same series A Set of Ten Famous Numbers for the Katsushika Circle (Katsushikaren meisu juban). The number ten, the largest in the set, is given to the canonical group of Confucius's ten foremost disciples, the so-called shitetsu or jittetsu in Japanese, recognized in the Analects and in later Confucian commentaries as the inner circle of the master's students. By assigning the highest number to this most authoritative grouping, the series quietly positions Confucian moral seriousness as the capstone of its catalogue of famous numbers. The Katsushika poetry circle, for which the set was commissioned, would have appreciated the wit: their own kyoka were comic by definition, yet here they framed their playful poems with one of the gravest emblems of classical learning. Yashima Gakutei, trained in the Hokusai school under Katsushika Hokusai, treats the disciples with the dignified line that surimono on Chinese sage subjects required, deploying a measured palette and the genre's signature deluxe techniques. [Karazuri](/glossary/karazuri) embossing animates the disciples' robes, metallic powders mark out prestige attributes, and mineral pigments are tuned to a sober harmony. As a Yashima Gakutei kyoka-e in the Hokusai school manner, this sheet uses Confucian tradition to lend gravitas to a series whose deeper purpose was the celebration of a contemporary Edo poetry club.