Asagao (Morning Glories), from the series Genji in Fashionable Modern Guise (Fūryū yatsushi Genji)

Born into a high-ranking samurai family, Chōbunsai Eishi studied painting as a boy in the orthodox Kanō school of official painters to the shōgun and daimyō 大名 (regional lords). In the mid-1780s, however, he received permission to retire from his official duties and devote himself to ukiyo-e prints and paintings. In his early prints, like this one, his figures followed the influential figure style of Torii Kiyonaga.

Eishi often made mitate-e 見立絵. Although the term is usually translated as “parody pictures,” it literally means “look-and-compare pictures,” referring to a visual analogy where contemporary scenes or figures are depicted in ways that allude to classical literature, historical events, or traditional themes. Extremely popular in the Edo period, a time of widespread literacy, this artistic approach created a playful intellectual dialogue between the artist and the viewer, who needed cultural knowledge to fully appreciate the layered meanings and references. Mitate-e works often juxtaposed the contemporary urban culture of the Edo period with classical Japanese and Chinese themes.

Here, the reference is to Chapter 20 in the 11th-century novel The Tale of Genji, titled Asagao, or "Morning Glories." In it, Genji pursues the lovely but resistant princess Asagao. Seeing withered morning glory blossoms one morning, he sends them to her as a symbol of their relationship: once vibrant in their youth but now faded, with Genji hoping to revive it. In this three-sheet print, or triptych, the figures are all in stylish, late 18th-century contemporary dress, but visual clues to the subject are seen in morning glories that appear at the lower left, and a morning glory pattern on the screen behind the figures. A key reference to the chapter is the young man seated at the center, representing Genji. He holds a rolled-up sheet of paper and is making ink on a black inkstone, preparing to write a poem to accompany the morning glory on the sheet in front of him. He seems to be calling over to the pageboy on the right, who looks back, to deliver it.