歌川広重　桜にルリビタキ　浮世絵錦絵　江戸時代

Although it is called a bush warbler in the kyōka (crazy poem) at top right, this bird closely resembles a red-flanked bluetail, a migratory species that spends the warmer months of the year in northeast Asia. Here, Utagawa Hiroshige depicts a male bluetail on a cherry branch, singing melodies to attract females during the mating season. Such scenes of chirping birds on delicately rendered tree branches have a long history in East Asian painting, but Hiroshige transposed the subject to the popular and accessible medium of print. The kyōka reads, "Japanese bush warbler / two gallons and a half [paid with rice] / thicket ground tax." In 1745 a new tax was imposed on bamboo thickets; while the chirping of the bird signaled the advent of spring, it also announced the coming of the taxman.