Ono no Komachi Visiting Kiyomizu Temple, from the series The Fashionable Seven Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi)
Chôbunsai Eishi (Japanese, 1756-1829)
Edo period (1615–1868), about 1788
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 38.7 × 25.4 cm (15 1/4 × 10 in.)
- Culture
- Japan
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of Asia
- Credit line
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In this print, two women and a young boy have gone to Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto to view the cherry blossoms. The boy ties a slip of paper with a poem on it onto one of the trees. This image refers to a myth from Ono no Komachi’s life, in which a young woman visiting Kiyomizu Temple overhears a monk’s prayers for Komachi and leads him to the elderly poet’s house. The print’s pale coloring—confined to green, pink, yellow, and shades of gray—gives the scene a soft, lyrical quality.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
