Japanese art Japanese art consists of a wide range of art styles and media that includes Jōmon pottery, ancient pottery, Japanese sculpture, sculpture, Ink wash painting, ink painting and Japanese calligraphy, calligraphy on silk and paper, Ukiyo-e, paint ...

, ''mitate-e'' () is a subgenre of

ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art that flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock printing, woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga, paintings of such subjects as female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes ...

that employs allusions, puns, and incongruities, often to parody classical art or events. The term derives from two roots: ''mitateru'' (, "to liken one thing to another") and ''e'' (, "picture"). The ''mitate'' technique arose first in poetry and became prominent during the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...

(794–1185).

Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

poets revived the technique during the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

(1603–1868), from which it spread to the other arts of the era. Such works typically employ allusions, puns, and incongruities, and frequently recall classical artworks. In the context of ukiyo-e, ''mitate-e'' is often translated into English as "parody picture". This usage of the term arose much later; the term itself was used in different ways during the Edo period. Those works today called ''mitate-e'' used different labels at the time, such as ''fūryū'' (, "elegant" or "fashionable") which appeared frequently in the 18th century on works by

Okumura Masanobu Okumura Masanobu (; 1686 – 13 March 1764) was a Japanese print designer, book publisher, and painter. He also illustrated novelettes and in his early years wrote some fiction. At first his work adhered to the Torii school, but later drifted be ...

(1686–1764) and

Suzuki Harunobu Suzuki Harunobu (; ) was a Japanese designer of woodblock print art in the style. He was an innovator, the first to produce full-color prints () in 1765, rendering obsolete the former modes of two- and three-color prints. Harunobu used many spe ...

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