The Inari Shrine at Oji, from the series Collection of Famous Views of Modern Tokyo

This series is made up of nineteen designs of mixed compositions. All the prints show at least two separate scenes often created by different artists. The Inari Shrine at Oji is a collaboration between Kawanabe Kyosai, Toyohara Kunichika, and Kunichika’s only female student, Toyohara Chikayoshi. The series takes a humorous look at modern Tokyo’s efforts to adopt all aspects of Western culture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. At left, Kyosai’s landscape of Oji shows a group of humanlike foxes dressed in both traditional Japanese-style and Western-style clothing. Oji, a region outside of Tokyo, was the legendary home of magical foxes that could take human form. The fox near the river looks at her human reflection in the water. Kyosai has humorously included a figure in the black uniform of a newly enlisted mail carrier. The portrait by Kunichika at upper right depicts the kabuki actor Nakamura Shikan IV in the role of Kitsune (meaning fox) Tadanobu from the play Yoshitsune and a Thousand Cherry Trees. Tadanobu, who transforms into a fox on stage, plays the drum made from the hide of his fox parents. The lower-right scene by Chikayoshi shows two beauties, an attendant and a guest, on the veranda of a restaurant in the Asukayama area.