Shadowings

all not now repeat any of the stories of this class which have been known to everybody from ancient times. But even in modern times the fame of the pictures painted by Hishigawa Kichibei--'Hishigawa's Portraits'--has become widespread in the land."

[8] He died in the eighteenth year of Kyôhô (1733). The painter to whom he refers--better known to collectors as Hishigawa Kichibei Moronobu--flourished during the latter part of the seventeenth century. Beginning his career as a dyer's apprentice, he won his reputation as an artist about 1680, when he may be said to have founded the Ukiyo-yé school of illustration. Hishigawa was especially a delineator of what are called fûryû, ("elegant manners"),--the aspects of life among the upper classes of society.

He then proceeds to relate the following story about one of the so-called portraits:--

There was a young scholar of Kyôto whose name was Tokkei. He used to live in the street called Muroma