Inexhaustible Layers of Allusion

The townspeople of Edo, under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate, had a special fondness for things that were “one thing and at the same time something else.” They delighted in a world seen through a crooked mirror — in seeing themselves masked, disguised, and ironic. From this love of ambiguity emerged a branch of ukiyo-e art: mitate-e (見立絵) — literally, “pictures seen as something else.” It was not merely an aesthetic joke but a way of thinking in which everyday life gained depth and sanctity could be disarmed with a single wink. The townsman of Edo laughed, yet understood — that ukiyo (the “floating world”) and ukiyo (the Buddhist “world of suffering”) were one and the same world, only differently read.

In mitate-e woodblock prints, a courtesan might turn out to be a goddess of mercy, an actor a former samurai, and a tobacco seller a Bodhisattva. The viewer who understood the allusion became a co-creator of the joke, part of an elite circle of the initiated, in which intelligence was measured not by status but by the flash of recognition. Edoites, deprived of a political voice, compensated for it in this very way — with humor, allusion, and the cult of subtle association. Their world was like kabuki: everything was a mask, and yet within that mask lay truth.

Mitate-e is an art that laughs and philosophizes at once. Beneath the guise of a joke, it hides a reflection on a world where no firm boundary exists between the sacred and the profane, the ancient and the contemporary, wisdom and desire. Each such image is a game in which the viewer’s eyes become the tools of philosophy. The one who can see the boy on a lion as both the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and, at the same time, a male prostitute from the pleasure quarters, understands that reality always has a second layer — and that in this lies the very charm of Edo Japan.

見立文殊菩薩

(Mitate Monju Bosatsu)

Mitate-e (Parody) of Monju, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom

– Suzuki Harunobu, 1768

Narrow as a sash of cloth, tall like the post upon which it was hung — this hashira-e from the 1760s, signed “Harunobu ga,” is a work that hides, within all its lightness, a true display of erudition and humor. On a vertical sheet (approx. 12.4 x 63.5 cm), a young man with delicate features sits sideways upon a reclining shishi lion, seemingly casually — and yet in a pose that has sacred ancestry. In his hand he holds a long pipe and a small tray with a tobacco accessory; his kimono ripples gently, his hair is smoothly combed, his gaze dreamy. The scene feels intimate, almost salon-like — but beneath the surface it is an ironic theater of ideas.

At first glance, we see a variation on the theme of Monju Bosatsu (文殊菩薩, Mañjuśrī) — the Bodhisattva of Wisdom, who in traditional depictions rides a lion, holding in his hand the sword that cuts through ignorance and the sutras of wisdom. Harunobu, however, reshuffles this entire set of meanings as if in a card game: the sword becomes a pipe, the sutra a tobacco accessory, and the lion — once a symbol of spiritual strength — here resembles a somewhat bored house cat. This is the very essence of mitate: a device by which the artist substitutes attributes and contexts, juxtaposing the exalted with the mundane to create a new, often subversive meaning.

The figure in the print is a kagema (陰間) — a young “boy from the teahouse” on a street near the kabuki theaters, a male prostitute. A viewer of the Edo period would have recognized this immediately: the delicate face, the long pipe, and the style of clothing clearly signified that this was no monk, but a boy from the pleasure district. Thus, Harunobu juxtaposes sanctity and sensuality, the Buddha’s teaching and flirtation, purity and temptation — and does so with grace, without a trace of malice.

Let us note the posture: the young man sits in the so-called hankashiyui (半跏思惟), or “pose of contemplation,” in which one leg hangs down and the other rests on the opposite knee. It is the classical posture of Maitreya or Nyoirin Kannon (the Bodhisattva of the Future Buddha / a form of Kannon), symbolizing meditation and spiritual reflection. Harunobu, with his characteristic refinement, thus pairs a meditative pose with a completely frivolous context: the young “courtesan” contemplates not enlightenment, but his pipe.

At the youth’s feet bloom peonies (botan) — the “queens of flowers” — which in Japanese art often accompany the kara-shishi lion, the “king of beasts.” This duo, botan–kara-shishi, is a motif known since the 8th century, symbolizing wealth, strength, and prosperity. In the Edo period, it often adorned fabrics and ceramics. Here, Harunobu uses it with a wink: the decorative pair — lion and peony — accentuates the theatrical opulence of the scene, as if spiritual enlightenment had turned into a luxurious beauty salon advertisement.

Some scholars suggest that this print might have been sponsored by a wealthy tobacco shop — which was, indeed, common in Edo: prints with allusions to pipes and tobacco often served as subtle advertisements. Another version of the same motif (a smaller sheet, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) supports this hypothesis. It is therefore possible that the mitate Monju Bosatsu was at once both an advertisement and an artistic riddle — in the spirit of “he who understands, smiles.”

And so — why do we smile? Because the Edo viewer saw two things at once — and neither was true without the other. In one instant, it is the Bodhisattva of Wisdom; in the next, an androgynously beautiful boy from the teahouse. The sword-pipe disarms solemnity, the lion becomes a decorative prop, and the sacred and the worldly merge into one. The viewer “sees one thing as another” — mi-tate — and in that very moment comes the flash of recognition, the intellectual joke that is the essence of mitate-e.

Harunobu teaches us here that seeing is an act of creation: that the meaning of an image is born not from pigment but from imagination. And that between pathos and laughter runs the thinnest possible line — and the thinner that line, the more delightful the effect. And delight need not mean shallowness at all.

What Exactly Is Mitate-e?

In the world of ukiyo-e, there were many ways of seeing, but none offered as much intellectual delight as mitate-e (見立絵). The term itself divides into two parts: mitateru (見立てる) — “to liken, to show as,” and e (絵) — “picture.” Literally, it means “picture of resemblance,” but in practice — “the art of seeing one thing as another.” The artist would say to the viewer: look again — “are you sure you see what you think you see?”

Mitate-e was not about illusion, but about the flash of recognition: the play of allusion, the substitution of attributes, the parody of conventions. It was a visual riddle, a poetic metaphor transposed into woodblock print.

The roots of mitate lie not in imagery but in language — in the subtle wordplay of waka and renga poetry of the Heian period. There, the mechanism of “seeing-as” was already at work: double meanings (kakekotoba), metaphors simultaneously referring to nature and human emotion. In the 17th century, this technique flourished in the work of haikai poets — especially Matsuo Bashō, who turned simple scenes into spiritual parables.

When color printing blossomed in Edo, mitate moved from poetry to images. It was then that people began to speak of mitate-e — prints made “in the likeness” of ancient motifs. Sometimes, however, the term was replaced by others: fūryū (風流 – “elegant, refined,” but also “fashionable” or “modern”), or yatsushi (やつし – “disguised, stylized”).

The Edo audience lived in a world of quotations. They knew old legends, poetry, and theater, and thus read an image doubly — as they would read haiku. In culture, this phenomenon was called shukō (趣向) — “double vision,” in which art reflects itself and its own era, while at the same time commenting on the past.

That is why mitate-e gave such joy: a viewer who recognized the hidden allusion felt like a co-author of the joke. A male prostitute portrayed as a Bodhisattva, a samurai turned into a poet, or a beauty from Yoshiwara shown as a modern Murasaki from Genji monogatari — this was erudition intertwined with irony. Within a single image collided two worlds: ga (雅 – refined) and zoku (俗 – vulgar, common).

In the second half of the 19th century, when censorship restricted satire and tastes shifted toward realistic landscapes (meisho-e) and portraits of beautiful women (bijin-ga), mitate-e gradually disappeared from the mainstream. Yet its spirit survived. In the Meiji and Taishō eras, it reappeared in advertising and kabuki theater, and today one can find it in manga, anime, and even in Japanese marketing campaigns that blend the sacred and pop culture with the same mischievous grace.

How Does Mitate Work?

Mitate-e is not only an aesthetic but a grammar of associations, governed by its own rules. The viewer looks at the image and recognizes within it a hidden “second layer” — as if someone had placed a transparent sheet bearing an ancient motif over a contemporary scene. It is precisely this moment of double vision — the instant when an image begins to mean something more — that forms the essence of mitate.

There are five “devices” that Edo woodblock artists commonly used — let’s look at them below.

#1. Substitution of Attributes (具の見立て – gu no mitate)

This is the simplest and most frequent device. Edo artists took recognizable symbols — a sword, a fan, a sutra, an instrument — and replaced them with objects from everyday life. The Bodhisattva Monju’s sword becomes a pipe in a youth’s hand, an imperial lady’s fan turns into a courtesan’s bath towel, and a sutra becomes a love letter. In this way, sanctity, wisdom, or heroism are “disenchanted” and transferred into the street world — frivolous, sensual, and alive.

#2. Substitution of Figures (人物の見立て – jinbutsu no mitate)

Here, the entire character is “disguised” in a new identity. A famous general from Chinese history becomes a kabuki actor, and a priestess from myth turns into a girl from Yoshiwara. It is a kind of theatrical masking in which a classical figure gains a contemporary body.
Example: in Suzuki Harunobu’s work, a beautiful courtesan plays the role of Fugen Bosatsu (Samantabhadra) riding on an elephant; yet her gaze and gestures are not meditative but flirtatious.

#3. Modernization (やつし – yatsushi)

This type of mitate was especially fashionable during the Genroku era (1688–1704). It consisted in depicting contemporary figures as famous people from the past — not to venerate them, but to play with them. A charming girl from a teahouse could be portrayed as the “new Murasaki Shikibu,” and a fishmonger as the “modern Benkei.” It was a form of parody and social commentary: the merchant class reclaiming the symbols of the old elite.

#4. Text versus Image (言葉と絵の見立て – kotoba to e no mitate)

Some mitate-e combined a short poem or proverb with an image illustrating it in a mischievous way — too literally, ironically, or with an erotic undertone. Words and image entered into dialogue: if the text said “The Buddha in meditation,” the image showed a drunken actor asleep after too much sake. Thus emerged a multilayered play of meanings — at once a joke and a philosophical paradox.

#5. The Role an Actor Never Played (役者の見立て – yakusha no mitate)

This variant was especially beloved by creators of yakusha-e (actor portraits). They portrayed famous kabuki performers in roles they had never actually played — for example, in scenes from mythology or classical poetry. It was a visual game with Edo’s theatrical world, a kind of fan “what-if” scenario — a shogunate-era fanfic. In Osaka, an entire subgenre of such prints developed — Osaka-e — full of pastiche and self-irony.

The Philosophy of Mitate — “Seeing Something As Something Else”

When we look at mitate-e, something strange happens in the mind. It is not mere viewing — it is the moment when two layers of reality overlap, like transparent sheets. The viewer sees both what is and what has been “substituted.”

Western philosophers would call this “seeing-as” — perceiving something as something else. For Wittgenstein, it is the moment when the duck-rabbit figure “flips” between interpretations; for Husserl, it is the tension between the object of the image (that which is painted) and the subject of the image (that which is depicted). In mitate, these two levels are not hidden but deliberately juxtaposed. The artist reveals to us the very structure of perception — as if saying, “Look, here is how your eye and mind work when they discover meaning in appearances.”

That is why mitate is so delightful. It is not merely a joke, but a joyful lesson in epistemology — rendered in nishiki-e colors. The viewer who recognizes the reference becomes, for a moment, a philosopher — discovering that the world of meanings is flexible, that what is sacred can be seen as profane, and what is serious as playful.

Behind this play lies a deep Buddhist intuition — non-duality. In the doctrine of muge (無礙), it is said that there are “no obstacles” between phenomena. The world is not composed of separate entities, but of constant interpenetration. Therefore, holiness can shine through the ordinary — as in Jakuchū’s painting Kaso Nehanzu, where the Buddha dies surrounded by insects and animals (more on this eccentric artist here: The Brilliant Eccentricity of Itō Jakuchū – Discover One of the Eccentric Painters of Edo Japan). In the same spirit, an Edo artist can depict a Bodhisattva in the body of a courtesan — not as desecration, but as a reminder that enlightenment and desire are two faces of the same reality.

Mitate-e grew out of haikai poetry — out of the spirit of quick wit and dialogue. In haikai, poets wrote in pairs: one line gave the image, the next provided the punchline. They were often bound by a hidden allusion called mitate-zuke — a subtle comparison of two distant things that suddenly “click” in the reader’s mind. Edo printmakers translated this poetic brilliance into the visual realm.

Thus mitate-e has the rhythm of haiku: brief, tense, full of sudden associations.
Consider just a few examples:

   -   A courtesan as Bodhidharma (Daruma) — the Zen master replaced by a woman from Yoshiwara; instead of a stern monk, a smiling beauty with a fan.

   -   The Three Vinegar Tasters — the classical Chinese allegory of Laozi, Buddha, and Confucius reimagined as three Japanese women drinking sake.

   -   Actresses as goddesses — contemporary beauties playing Amaterasu, Benzaiten, or Sei Shōnagon.

Each of these images is a miniature philosophical experiment: how many meanings can one motif carry? And how thin is the line between parody and meditation?

5 Examples of Mitate-e

To fully grasp how mitate works — this brilliant art of double vision — it is worth seeing it in action. Let us therefore look at five examples in which Edo artists, with masterful humor, erudition, and lightness, juxtaposed the sacred with the everyday, the old with the new, and philosophy with gossip from Yoshiwara.

“Kaso Nehanzu (Vegetable Parinirvana)”

華蔬涅槃図

(Kaso Nehanzu)

— Itō Jakuchū, ca. 1794, Kyoto

At first glance, it is a parody of the classical Nehanzu scene — the death of the Buddha Śākyamuni — yet instead of the Buddha we see… a white daikon, that is, a Japanese radish, arranged majestically on a bed of cabbage leaves. Around it hundreds of mourners have gathered: carrots, eggplants, cucumbers, and other vegetables, each with tiny, anthropomorphic features.

Jakuchū does not mock religion — he meditates on it. In the spirit of the Zen doctrine “busshō sōmotsu kokorozashi ari” (“even inanimate things possess the Buddha-nature”) he shows that enlightenment permeates everything: even the vegetables at the Nishiki market. It is at once a joke and a discourse on universal spirituality — Buddhism translated into the language of everyday life.

“A Courtesan Dances to the Accompaniment of Daruma”

達磨に伴う遊女の舞

(Daruma ni tomonau yūjo no mai)

— Ishikawa Toyonobu, ca. 1755, Edo

On paper and silk: a magnificently dressed courtesan in a rich kimono raises her hands to dance, and beside her sits Daruma — a bearded, balding monk who, in Zen tradition, sat nine years in meditation. Here, however, he plays the shamisen, an instrument of the pleasure quarters.

The collision of asceticism and sensuality is deliberate. The image playfully questions the gravity of Zen, showing that enlightenment can be found even in laughter and music. The Edo viewer laughed, yet understood — that ukiyo (the floating world) and ukiyo (the world of suffering) are one and the same world, differently read.

“A Hundred Faces of a Cat”

猫の百面相

(Neko no hyakumensō)

— Utagawa Kuniyoshi, ca. 1847–1852, Edo

At first glance we see a grotesque human face. Only after a moment do we notice that it is constructed from dozens of cats in various poses — one forms an eyebrow, another the nose, yet another the mouth.

It is an artful game with perception and identity, a visual mitate in its purest form. Kuniyoshi, a lover of cats and jokes, shows that an image can simultaneously be what it depicts and what it is made of. Illusion becomes a philosophical play — “who are we really, if we are composed of many small masks?”

“Beauties as ‘Soga no taimen’”

曽我の対面美人合

(Soga no taimen bijin awase)

— Kitagawa Utamaro, ca. 1795, Edo

Three elegant women from the Yoshiwara district stand facing one another, each in a different, sumptuous outfit. The gestures of their hands and their gazes arrange themselves into a dramatic scene. The title reveals that they are performing “the meeting of the Soga brothers with their father’s murderer” — one of the most famous stories of samurai revenge.

Utamaro “substitutes” warriors with beauties — he collides tragedy and elegance, katakiuchi (revenge, more here: Katakiuchi – A License for Samurai Clan Revenge in the Era of the Edo Shogunate) with bijin-ga (the picture of beauty). It is a subtle irony: women who, in Edo life, had no right to exact revenge here “play” samurai. Mitate reverses roles and genders, turning drama into a lyrical masquerade.

“Seven Beauties in a Bamboo Grove”

竹林の七美人

(Chikurin no shichi bijin)

— Suzuki Harunobu, ca. 1768, Edo

Against the backdrop of a delicate bamboo grove sit seven young women in pastel kimono, playing music, drinking sake, writing poetry. Yet the composition and arrangement of bodies are familiar — they are the famous Chinese “Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove,” transposed into the world of Edo.

Harunobu plays with homonymy: the character 妍 (ken) — “beauty” — sounds the same as 賢 (ken) — “sage.” In this way he creates a linguistic-visual joke in which learning and loveliness weave into a single category. Mitate in this version is not mockery but an elegant cultural flirtation — between the classical ga and the contemporary zoku.

Each of these examples is a different shade of the same game: mitate-e offers not a single truth, but lets the world speak in two layers at once. And this is precisely its charm — the intelligent wink between past and present.

Mitate as a Tool of Social Play

The inhabitants of Edo, seemingly imprisoned in the rigid Tokugawa status system, created a subtle way of speaking between the lines. Mitate was one of their favorite languages — a code of the initiated, a bourgeois “intelligence test” in which understanding allusions determined belonging to a cultural club.

Edo society, though hierarchical, in practice functioned on the basis of a network of informal communities of taste — circles of haikai poets, kabuki enthusiasts, collectors of woodblock prints. They formed an audience that needed neither sword nor pedigree to feel elite. It was enough to recognize that a courtesan playing the shamisen “is” Bodhidharma, or that a geisha with a fan “pretends to be” Sei Shōnagon. It was a society of dense allusions and cultural quotations, in which symbolic capital (as Bourdieu would later call it) carried more weight than a samurai’s crest.

In an Era of Moral and Political Censorship, Mitate Became a Safe Tool of Satire

It was possible to laugh at authority — as long as one did it indirectly, through metaphor, substitution, and disguised meaning. A parody of religion? Certainly, but in the form of a Daruma with a shamisen. A critique of the manners of the upper classes? Of course — as long as it was hidden in a joke about a Bodhisattva and a courtesan. Mitate allowed people to express what could not be spoken openly — as if all of Edo communicated in a whisper full of allusions.

There was something theatrical about this social game, which scholars would later call a performative urban culture. The townspeople of Edo — merchants, craftsmen, actors — had no voice in politics, but they regained dignity in the realm of style, taste, and irony. Their city pulsed with iki — the spirit of refined detachment and the conscious play of appearances. In this world, mitate-e served as a mirror of intelligence: whoever understood the joke ceased to be a mere spectator and became a co-creator of the work.

In this way, mitate became not only an artistic technique but also a social ritual of recognition — a sign that, in the dense labyrinth of Edo, you could perceive the hidden layer beneath the surface, and thus see the world as those truly educated in the art of impermanence saw it.

The Long Echo of Mitate-e

Mitate-e, like the entire world of Edo, did not disappear — it merely changed its costume. When, in the second half of the 19th century, Japan entered the Meiji era, ukiyo-e woodblock prints began to give way to photography and new forms of image reproduction, and the very formula of mitate became dispersed. Yet it did not die: it passed into a culture that — paradoxically — still relies on the same mechanism of “seeing something as something else.”

During the era of modernization, Meiji artists, writers, and advertisers began using mitate in new contexts: in posters, in satirical magazines called ponchi-e, and in illustrations for novels. Well-known historical figures appeared in modern clothing, and parodies of old scenes became commentaries on the rapid Westernization of the country. Mitate became an ironic mirror of modernization — an opportunity to laugh at the fact that Japan was playing the role of the West.

In the 20th century, the spirit of mitate was reborn in cinema, literature, and pop culture. Directors such as Kurosawa and Mizoguchi, creating reinterpretations of ancient legends, used the same play of double meanings that had animated ukiyo-e. Contemporary anime and manga are full of parodies, references, and quotations that operate on precisely the same principle — whoever catches the allusion becomes part of an initiated community, just like a viewer in an Edo teahouse.

Even advertising and design — from posters to internet memes — continue the mitate tradition. Only the actors have changed: instead of courtesans and monks, there are pop idols and video game characters; instead of the sword and sutra, a smartphone and a cup of coffee. But the game remains the same — a world shown with a wink, in which the everyday is disguised as a symbol, and the symbol as the everyday.

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"Strong Japanese Women"

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    未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

  Mike Soray

   (aka Michał Sobieraj)

未開    ソビエライ

 An enthusiast of Asian culture with a deep appreciation for the diverse philosophies of the world. By education, a psychologist and philologist specializing in Korean studies. At heart, a programmer (primarily for Android) and a passionate technology enthusiast, as well as a practitioner of Zen and mono no aware. In moments of tranquility, adheres to a disciplined lifestyle, firmly believing that perseverance, continuous personal growth, and dedication to one's passions are the wisest paths in life. Author of the book "Strong Women of Japan" (>>see more)

Personal motto:

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest." - Albert Einstein (probably)

Mike Soray

(aka Michał Sobieraj)

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