Eishi | Four Bijins from Tamaya

Chobunsai Eishi (1756-1829)

The women are beautiful, so very beautiful, and as the years went on they got taller and thinner and more elegant. Indeed, they hardly looked of this world.

They were the ever-lengthening visions of Chobunsai Eishi, seen by many as a rival to Utamaro and Kiyonaga. But truly, he was his own man, and his story is quite unusual in the annals of Ukiyoe lives.

Also known by the given name Hosoda, Eishi’s life and career took a circular journey. He was born in 1756 into a high-ranking samurai family — so high-ranking in fact, that he himself received an annual salary of 500 koku a year. (A koku was cost of rice for one man for one year, and was the main monatory measurement of Edo times.) This meant he was quite wealthy, at least by the standards of Japanese woodblock print designers; so many Ukiyoe artists, despite the fame granted them by posterity, were quite poor throughout their lives.

Eishi held a position in the Shogun Tokugawa Leheru’s palace, but gave it up to pursue painting in the Kano school. His first known prints date from 1785, and a few years later he left the Shogunate to pursue art full time. He became known for his prints of beautiful women — bijin — and was soon as equally renowned as his rivals, Utamaro and Kiyonaga. His first known designs featured courtersans, usually standing, and later he focused more on the daily routines of women, often seated, from other walks of life.

As the years progressed, his women became taller and thinner and always standing — more stereotypical examples of the ideal of female beauty than realistic depictions of it. (Edo people were actually somewhat short and compact.) As they grew upwards, the women’s necks lengthened and their heads got smaller and smaller, as least relative to their willowy bodies. They backgrounds tended to be spare, with a muted palette, quietly emphasizing the figures at the forefront of the designs.

Eishi eventually returned to his first love, painting, and by the end of his career focused on it. His paintings became sought after in the Shogun’s court. And so he once again returned to that storied world. In 1800 the Empress acquired one of his paintings, and from 1801 he dedicated himself to painting full-time.

As I said, full circle.

He died in 1829.