Madame Tang (Tō Fujin), from the series Fashionable Japanese Versions of the Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Fūryū Yamato Nijūshi kō)

Filial devotion is shown by Madame Tang (Chinese: Tang Furen; Japanese Tō Fujin) breast-feeding her mother, who would otherwise have starved due to her lack of teeth (for a Meiji-period version, see JP3332). The series is based on the traditional Chinese Confucian text “The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety” (Nijūshi-kō). The original stories highlight extreme, historical acts of devotion by children toward their parents. The word fūryū in the title implies contemporary chic, fashionable, or up-to-date style. Koryūsai took these archaic, solemn Chinese legends and reimagined them using contemporary Japanese figures—mostly fashionable women (bijin) and lovers—set in the pleasure quarters of Edo. Instead of literal retellings, each print relies on clever visual parody (mitate) or thematic parallels to reference the original story.

Though in deplorable condition, and the series title only partially decipherable, to our knowledge this print is one of very few known surviving impressions.