Shadowings

[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