Parrot Komachi, from the series The Fashionable Seven Komachi (Furyu nana Komachi)
Chôbunsai Eishi (Japanese, 1756 –1829)
c. 1788
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Classification
- Dimensions
- 36.5 × 25.1 cm (14 3/8 × 9 7/8 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
The stooped figure of an elderly Ono no Komachi stands in the distance behind two fashionable young women and a child. In this scene, one of the women holds a piece of paper with a poem written on it, a reference to a specific episode in Komachi’s life. After receiving a poem from the emperor, she replied by returning the same poem with only one character changed. Komachi’s response was comparable to that of a parrot, hence the name of the story, “Parrot Komachi."
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
