浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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FRONT COVER: Detail from Utagawa Kunisada [Utagawa Toyokuni III] (1786-1864), Hachidanme, 

from the 1859 series Chûshingura E-kyôdai [Cat. No. 1/VIII]

While the culture of the courtesan and that of the geisha was ostensibly distinct and sharply 

drawn, geisha in the licensed quarters being forbidden from engaging sexually with the yûjo 

or courtesan’s customers, the line was always somewhat blurred, the basis of contemporary 

confusion over the scope and tone of the latter’s profession. As one pithy senryû [epigram] 

author put it, writing about geisha of a disreputable quarter: ‘First will she spread ~ second, 

how’s her voice?’ Despite this ambiguity, however, the two worlds were divided and 

discrete, this delineation being markedly expressed in attire, manner, training, housing, 

governmental bureaucracy and general public perception. To a geisha, the high-ranking 

courtesans were vulgar, flashy, and obvious ~ their eroticism openly displayed in their 

overly-elaborate, brightly coloured attire and complicated hairstyles (such as their multiple 

use of kogai or hair pins). The geisha, on the other hand, strove for an understated elegance 

known as iki, a ‘cool’, restrained sense of style, which could only be truly appreciated by a 

customer who was iki himself. 

In the woodblock prints featured in the exhibition, oiran (a generic terms for the highest 

class of courtesan; lit. ‘castle toppler’, in reference to the ease at which they could rid an 

infatuated daimyô [lord] of his estates) predominate, depicted both as themselves and in a 

variety of roles, drawn principally from classical novel and epic. This conflation of famous 

courtesan with beloved literary archetype served to render what were, essentially, indentured 

entertainers and prostitutes, however artistically skilled, into figures of legend with no 

reference point to the often harsh, quotidian reality of the pleasure quarters, which, according 

to figures at the end of the nineteenth century were riddled with syphilis and gonorrhoea 

(over 9, 000 Yoshiwara women suffering from the former in 1893 alone) [De Becker: 1899, 

p. 360]. 

Indeed, the mythologizing of the ‘flowers of the floating world’ rooted early and continues 

to flourish today~ the often far from romantic reality as adroitly masked as it was in the early 

modern era. Included in our exhibition is a Meiji-period image by an anonymous 

photographer, which poignantly counterweights that myth: a rare portrait of an Okami-san [a 

proprietress of a teahouse]. Her world weary, resigned expression recalling lines penned a 

century earlier by the renowned literati Ôta Nampo (1749-1823) on the insubstantial, shifting 

ground underpinning the floating world: 

Courtesans of the Five Streets of the Quarter, 

Ten years adrift on an ocean of troubles, 

Released at twenty-seven with misguided dreams 

Ah! This bitter mirage of the brothels! 

[Trans. T. Clark] 

EARLY JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY 

Anne Louise Avery 

The origins of photography in Japan can be traced to 1848, when a daguerreotype camera 

was imported by Ueno Shunnojo (1790-1851) through the island of Dejima, the Nagasaki 

enclave where Chinese and Dutch merchants were allowed to trade during the long period of 

Japan’s ‘Seclusion Law’ or Sakoku (ca.1650-1854). 

It was within the scientific rather than artistic community that photography began to flourish. 

In 1853, a Dutch doctor and amateur photographer, Dr J. K. van den Broek, arrived to work 

at a Nagasaki hospital and started to instruct a number of Japanese in the daguerreotype and 

calotype techniques. His successor at the hospital in 1857, Dr J. L. C. Pompe van 

Meerdervoort, introduced the relatively new wet-plate process to two of his most talented 

chemistry students: Ueno Hikoma (1838-1904), Ueno Shunnojo’s son, who subsequently 

opened the first commercial photo studio in Japan in 1862, and Kyuichi Uchida who went on 

to take the first photographic portraits of the Meiji Emperor and Empress.

The earliest known authenticated images of a Japanese subject were a number of 

daguerreotypes taken in the United States by the Baltimore photographer Harvey R. Marks 

(1821-1902) in 1851. Marks photographed some of the survivors from a Japanese shipwreck, 

who had been rescued and brought to San Francisco in 1851, notably 'Sam Patch' the cook. 

Sam Patch later returned in 1854 with Commodore Perry, whose intention was to force 

Japan to abandon her isolationist position and open up to trade with America. Perry’s official 

photographer, Eliphalet Brown, Jr (1816-1886), took over 200 daguerreotypes of the 

expedition, photographing a number of Japanese women, including one courtesan. Few of 

these pictures are extant. 

The success of Perry’s mission led to the arrival in 1856 of US consul Townsend Harris 

together with a Dutch interpreter, Henry Heusken. Heusken was also a photographer, and 

among his students was Renjo Shimooka (1823-1914), who opened a studio in Yokohama in 

1862. Russia had also sent naval expeditions in 1853 and 1854, including a daguerreotypist, 

Captain Aleksander Mozhaiskii in 1854. 

Subsequent to these visits, the US, Russia and other Western countries negotiated the 

establishment of a number of 'treaty ports', including Yokohama, Hakodate and Shimoda. 

Following an American, Orrin E. Freeman, and an Englishman, William Saunders, Felice 

Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908) arrived in Yokohama in around 1862, with an impressive 

professional record [Cat. No. 52; 53]. His reputation quickly grew, during the 1860s being 

considered the foremost Western photographer in Japan, until the sale of his studio to Baron 

von Stillfried in 1877, ending his sojourn in Japan. Commercial photography in Japan owed 

much to Beato, particularly in the relation to the practice of hand-colouring prints ~ a 

process which brought the art of photography closer to the traditions of ukiyo-e woodblock 

prints. 

His successor, Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839-1911), an Austrian aristocrat, 

was one of the leading photographers of the nineteenth century [Cat. No. 54]. Throughout 

the 1870s, he managed a series of professional studios in Yokohama, which was now firmly 

established as the premiere gateway for the Western tourist trade. As such, it supported and 

nurtured the rapid spread of commercial photography, the number of studios expanding 

rapidly. In the 1880s, the Yokohama shashin [‘Yokohama-style photograph’] entered its 

heyday: the shift from experimental dilettanteism to commercialism evident in the new 

production of souvenir photograph albums, replete with geisha, samurai, quaint peasantry 

and the omnipresent ‘Fujiyama’; sold to foreign tourists as virtual records of their 

experiences in the exotic and bewildering country. 

The tourist trade, however, was not the only marketplace in which the empiricism of early 

photography was utilised. From the 1870s to the mid-1880s, photographs of the inmates of 

the Yoshiwara were displayed in frames outside of the respective brothels. Later, this 

practice was refined into the presentation of albums (mostly consisting of women from first 

and second-class houses) to prospective customers. Called Shashin mitate-chô (‘photograph 

albums to facilitate the selection of girls), one stated that ‘you can find any flower you desire 

if you go to the Yoshiwara. However, the practice of promenading…is too old a custom to 

be revived in these times, and so we have hit upon the plan of grouping a collection of belles 

in the space of a small photograph album…leaving our guests to select the flowers they 

fancy’ [From a photograph album of the Ohiko-rô]. 

In this way, the Yokohama photograph entered the culture of the Floating World, its ability 

to objectively capture an image rendering it a dark modern successor to the idealised 

woodblocks still being printed in the Nihonbashi publishing houses: the shashin, literally 

meaning ‘truthful copy’, revealing the monetary sordidity of the pleasure districts in a way 

that the nishiki-e could never do. 

During this period, the principal and most prolific studios were those of Adolfo Farsari 

(1841-1898), whose reputation, according to Rudyard Kipling, extended ‘from Saigon even 

to America [Cat. No. 55],’ and the increasingly financially-successful Japanese photographic 

pioneers, led by Kimbei Kusakabe (1841-1934) [Cat. No. 51, 56, 57], Kazuma Ogawa 

(1860-1929) [Cat. No.: 58] and Kozaburo Tamamura (1856-1915). 

The ascendancy of Yokohama as a centre for photography began to wane at the close of the 

Meiji period (1868-1912), when advances in camera technology enabled amateurs affordably

I. Daiichinokan. Kiritsubo. [Chapter 1: The Paulownia Court] 

Date [Western]: 1858 

Date [Japanese]: Second Month of Ansei 5 

Signature: Toyokuni-ga within a toshidama cartouche 

Zodiacal Date Seal: uma ni/horse 2 

Publisher’s Seal: Uoya Eikichi 

Carver: Yokogawa Takejiro 

School: Utagawa 

Method: Nishiki-e woodblock with karazuri 

Format: Ôban tate-e diptych 

Condition: Very good; some light creasing; pristine colour with the fugitive purple 

intact 

Dimensions: Each sheet 14 x 9 inches 

Code: SOX 

Price [Framed]: £550 

II. Daishichinokan E-awase [Chapter 17: The Picture Contest] 








Method: Nishiki-e woodblock with karazuri 


Condition: Excellent with fine karazuri; pristine colour with the fugitive purple intact 


Code: SOX 


III. Dainijûgonokan. Hotaru. [Chapter 25: Fireflies] 


Date [Japanese]: Seventh Month of Ansei 5 


Zodiacal Date Seal: uma shichi/horse 7 

Publisher’s Seal: Wakasaya Yoichi 


Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print with karazuri 




Code: SOX 


IV. Daisanjûnokan. Fujibakama. [Chapter 30: Purple Trousers] 










Condition: Excellent with fine karazuri; pristine colour with the fugitive purple intact


Code: SOX 


V. Daiyonjûnikan. Niou no Miya. [Chapter 42: His Perfumed Highness] 


Date [Japanese]: Ansei 6 


Censor/Zodiacal Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined’] and date seal [yagi 

ichi/goat 1] 

Publisher’s Seal: Ebisu-ya Shôshichi 







Code: SOX 


3. Utagawa Kunisada [Utagawa Toyokuni III] (1786-1864) 

Blossom Viewing [Hanami] 

Series: Tôsei Genji [Modern Day Genji] 


Date [Japanese]: 10 th Month of Ansei 6 

Censor/Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined] and zodiacal date seal [yagi jû/goat 

10] 


Publisher’s Seal: Ki-ya Sojiro 

Carver: Kosen 


Method: Nishiki-e woodblock 

Format: Ôban tate-e triptych 

Condition: Excellent 

Dimensions: Each sheet 15 x 9 3/4 inches 


This rare triptych, similarly drawing on the rambunctious Inaka Genji gôkan, depicts 

Mitsuuji [Genji] in elaborate cold weather attire watching an inebriated group of spring 

revellers frolic under the blossom, the court ladies accompanying him closely resembling a 

courtesan and her kamuro. Dominating the composition, his exaggerated stature recalls lines 

from ‘The Festival of the Cherry Blossoms’ [Hananoen], Chapter 8 of Genji monogatari, 

describing the prince at a hanami party: ‘Genji dressed himself with great care…He wore a 

robe of thin white Chinese damask with a red lining and under it a very long train of 

magenta. Altogether, the dashing young prince, he added something new to the assembly 

that so cordially received him…He quite overwhelmed the blossoms, in a sense spoiling the 

party.’ 


Admiring Suzumushi [Bell Crickets] on a Summer Evening 


Date [Japanese]: Tenth month of Man-en 1/Ansei 7 

Signatures: Toyokuni-ga [middle and right-hand panels]; Kunihisa-ga [left-hand 

panel] 

Censor/Date Seal: Combined aratame-date seal [saru jû/monkey 10] 

Publisher’s Seal: Moriya Jihei


Yatsu koane tenen no zu [Eight Princesses from the Tales of the Dog Warriors] 

Series: Satomi Hakkenden Sôkanbi [The Final Chapter of the Tales of the Eight Dog 

Warriors from Satomi] 


Date [Japanese]: Twelfth Month of Ansei 2 

Signature: oju Toyokuni-ga 

Censor Seal: aratame [‘examined’] 

Zodiacal Date Seal: usagi jûni/hare 12 

Carver: Sashichi 


Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print with karazuri [‘blind printing’] 


Condition: Good; some creasing on left-hand sheet; fugitive purple intact 

Dimensions: Each sheet 14 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches 

Code: SOX 

Price [Mounted]: £650 

A rare triptych depicting the usually neglected female characters from the Nansô Satomi 

Hakkenden by Takizawa Bakin (1767-1849), a series of 106 yomihon published between 

1814 and 1841. The tales, their complex plot-lines structured around bushi notions of heroic 

courage, duty, honour, filial piety, righteousness, and unflinching physical prowess, 

originally deriving from the Chinese novel Shuihuzhuan [The Water Margin; Japanese: 

Suikoden]. 

The story begins with Satomi Yoshizane offering his beloved daughter Fusehime to 

whomever can manage to kill his sworn enemy. In a strange twist of fate, Yatsufusa, his 

faithful dog, murders the odious man, returning with his severed head. Against her distraught 

father’s wishes, Fusehime subsequently accepts the hound as her husband, submitting to the 

winds of karma. Eventually a child is born to the unlikely pairing. After the birth, a vassal of 

Yoshizane attempts to kill Yatsufusa, but, instead, his bullet strikes Fusehime who then 

commits suicide. On the moment of death, eight magical tei beads, each inscribed with a 

character signifying a Confucian virtue, fly up to the heavens and vanish. They are later 

discovered in the clutched hands of infant sons born to families whose names begin with inu, 

the kanji for dog. 

Once grown, these eight young ‘dog’ warriors, the spiritual offspring of the tragic Fusehime, 

engage in numerous heroic exploits, eventually restoring the dispossessed Satomi family to 

power. The huge canvas painted by the loquacious Bakin ensured its popularity as rich 

source of imagery for ukiyo-e warrior prints [musha-e] and mitate-e. This work, a form of 

gentle mitate-e, is interesting for its exclusive focus on the wives and daughters of the series; 

as usual, portrayed by famous tayû of the day. 

The grouping consists of the following characters: Shizuo-hime [1 st Princess, Shinbee's wife] 

Kinoto-hime [2 nd Princess, Sôsuke’s wife]; Hinaki-hime [3 rd Princess, Daikaku’s wife]; 

Takeno-hime [4 th Princess, Dôsetsu’s wife]; Onami-hime [7 th Princess, Keno’s Wife]; Irotohime 

[8 th Princess, Kobungo’s wife]; and two Senior Ladies in Waiting [Rôjo]. 

The byôbu decorated with auspicious cranes and the mass of plum blossom in the centre of 

the composition indicates the early spring. 


Cherry Trees at Night [Yozakura] 



Censor/Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined’] and zodiacal date seal [saru 

ni/monkey 2] 

Publisher’s Seal: Shimizu-ya Naôjirô 

School: Utagawa

Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print 


Condition: Excellent; slight wear at edges of sheets 


Code: SOX 


Almost identical in design to an earlier triptych of 1850, Viewing Plum Blossoms at Night 

[Okonomi yoru no umemi], this rare triptych is one of a series of works depicting hanami 

[blossom viewing] in the capital. In the Edo imagination, the beauty and brevity of the 

cherry blossom was synonymous with the transient pleasures offered by the Floating World. 

Aside from the Shin Yoshiwara, where cherry trees were specially planted for the flowering 

season, four places were most frequented for hanami parties: Ueno, Gotenyama, Asukayama 

and the banks of the Sumidagawa [Sumida River]. The river was particularly popular for 

moonlit strolls among the fragrant blossoms, a picturesque theme frequently explored by 

ukiyo-e artists. 

The sakura fever that overtook Japan every spring was parodied in one famous geisha kouta 

[a short, lyrical song accompanied by the shamisen], popular in Kunisada’s day: 

Sakura sakura to O the cherry, the cherry, 

Hitobito ga When is it that folks 

Ukaretamau wa Frolic about under the blossom? 

Itsu no koto From the end of the Third Month 

Sangatsu sue To the middle of the Fourth, 

Kara shigatsu It’s nothing 

No nakareba kana but cherry blossom! 

Hanazakari 


Kachô noriai genji [Prince Genji partnered with Birds and Flowers] 


Date [Japanese]: Eighth Month of Ansei 6 


Censor/Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined’] and zodiacal date seal [yagi 

hachi/goat 8] 

Publisher’s Seal: Kaga-ya Kichiemon 


Method: Nishiki-e woodblock print with karazuri [‘blind printing’] 




Code: SOX 


The ‘modern’ Genji floats down a river on a yakatabune [palace boat] accompanied, as 

usual, by a coterie of ladies. Cherry trees in bloom represent the ‘partnership’ of the title and 

refer to the evanescent nature of such delightful entertainment. Contrasting with his party’s 

elegance, is a regular river barge, filled with lower-class, slightly rusticated entertainers who 

have obviously come from a spring matsuri. The costume being roughly shoved away for its 

inhabitant to smoke a pipe, is that of an oni or demon. 

Guardians of the entrance to hell, the horned, shaggy-haired and club-wielding oni, were 

usually considered a powerfully malevolent force. However, like the shape-shifting kitsune 

[fox], they were often capricious in their relationship with humanity ~ occasionally 

performing good deeds or offering unexpected assistance. Such unpredictable fluxes of good 

and bad behaviour made appropriate obeisances necessary and every spring oni-odori 

[demon dances] would take place around the country. At the beginning of the second month

it was also traditional to cast dried beans [signifying prosperity] in a dwelling’s nooks and 

crannies to drive any resident recalcitrant oni away. 

9. Utagawa Kunisada [Utagawa Toyokuni III] (1786-1864) and Utagawa Hiroshige 

(1797-1858). 

Azuma Genji Yuki no Niwa [The Eastern Genji in the Snowy Garden] 


Date [Japanese]: Twelfth Month of Ansei 1 

Signatures and Artist’s Inscriptions/Seals: Toyokuni-ga in a toshidama cartouche [left 

and right-hand sheets]; Yuki no kei oju [‘The Snow Scene on Request’]; Hiroshige-hitsu 

with Ichiryusai seal 

Censor Seal: Aratame [‘examined’] 

Zodiacal Date Seal: tora jûni/tiger 12 

Publisher’s Seal: Moriji 




Condition: Excellent; particularly fine colour and bokashi 


Code: SOX 

Price [Framed]: £1, 650 

This collaborative design, showing Genji and Murasaki watching a group of maids building 

a yuki-usagi [snow rabbit], consists of a landscape background by Hiroshige, with figures by 

Kunisada. Although the genji mon forming the cartouche in the right-hand sheet is that of 

Chapter 12 of Genji monogatari, the construction of a snow sculpture that forms the central 

motif of the work, seems to bear a closer relationship to an oft-depicted passage in Chapter 

20, Asagao [Morning Glory]: 

‘There was a heavy fall of snow. In the evening there were new flurries. The moon turned 

the deepest recesses of the garden into a gleaming white. The contrast between the snow on 

the bamboo and the snow on the pines was very beautiful...The flowerbeds were wasted, the 

brook seemed to send up a strangled cry, and the lake was frozen and somehow terrible. Into 

this austere scene, Genji sent little maidservants, telling them that they must make snowmen. 

Their dress was bright and their hair shone in the moonlight. The older ones were especially 

pretty…the fresh sheen of their hair black against the snow. The smaller ones quite lost 

themselves in the sport…It was all very charming.’ [Seidensticker, trans., 1976: p.357]. 

In Japanese cosmology, the quasi-divine figure of the white rabbit was thought to embody 

the spirit of the moon; the god of the moon and the seasonal tides, Tsuki-Yomi, often 

depicted as riding a giant usagi. As such, the construction of a snow rabbit in the moonlit 

garden would have been particularly appropriate. That the maid servants are shown placing 

the final eye in the rabbit is of import, as its recalls the Buddhist eye-opening ceremony 

[kaigen], based on the tenet that a wooden or painted image can only embody its signified 

divinity when the eyes are painted in. Kaigen often drew huge crowds of people, in 752, for 

example, when a large bronze image of Roshana (Mahavairocana) was dedicated in the main 

hall of Todai-ji in Nara, the Buddha's eyes being painted in by an Indian monk, it was 

witnessed by roughly ten thousand priests and numerous foreign visitors. 


Yukimi tsuki [Snow Viewing Month] 

Series: Genji Jûnikagetsu no uchi [The Twelve Months of Genji] 


Date [Japanese]: Seven Month of Ansei 3 

Signature: Toyokuni-ga in a toshidama cartouche 

Zodiacal Date Seal: tatsu shichi/dragon 7 

Publisher’s Seal: Fujioka-ya Keijirô 

School: Utagawa



Condition: Excellent with especially fine colour and detailing 


Code: SOX 


This important and rare work offers a further reinterpretation of Chapter 20 of Genji 

monogatari, with the erection of a snow frog [yuki-kaeru] being substituted for the yukiusagi. 

Genji, surrounded by courtiers, points his kiseru [pipe] at the group energetically 

putting the finishing touches to the sculpture. Again, the moment is that of the placement of 

the final eye, the ritualised awakening and ensouling of the image. 

In Japanese the word for "frog" and the verb for "to return" are pronounced the same way 

[kaeru], and, in the floating world, it became customary for a geisha or courtesan to fold and 

pin up an origami frog after entertaining a favourite patron, in the hope that he would return. 

A further semantic layer is offered by the Zen notion that the characteristic squatting position 

of the frog was reminiscent of a monk’s meditation or zazen position; the Rinzai Zen master 

Sengai Gibbon (1750-1837), for example, executing numerous sumi-e sketches on that 

theme. Thus, as with most ukiyo-e, all is not quite as it seems ~ the playful snow frog 

actually being positioned in the apposite pose for the achievement of satori or 

enlightenment: the awareness of the transience of all things, a constant of both Genji and 

ukiyo culture, being conflated with the asobi [play] of Genji and companions in the snow. As 

one of Genji’s waka from Chapter 20 expresses, in the midst of pleasure, the sadness of this 

world of fragile appearances, the old sense of ukiyo, can suddenly intrude. Admiring the 

beauty of Murasaki against the backdrop of the snowy garden, his thoughts are interrupted 

by the call of a waterfowl: ‘A night of drifting snow and memories/Is broken by another note 

of sadness.’ 

11. Utagawa Kunisada II (1823-1880) 

The Shin Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter 


Date [Japanese]: First Month of Man-en 2 

Signature: Kunisada-ga 

Censor/Zodiacal Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined’] and date seal [tori ichi/ 

cock 1] 

Publisher’s Seal: Chôkichiban [rare] 





Condition: Good 

Code: SOX 


The Shin Yoshiwara [‘New Yoshiwara’] pleasure quarter represented the nexus of the 

floating world. It was named for the marshy reed plains near Nihonbashi where it was 

originally established, by Shouji Jin'emon (1576-1644), at the beginning of the seventeenth 

century, the only bakufu sanctioned prostitution zone in Edo. Almost immediately, however, 

the first kanji ‘reed’, was replaced by that for ‘happiness’, which shares the same reading; 

transfiguring the meaning to the more appropriate and appealing ‘Plain of Happiness’. In 

1657, a terrible fire swept through the enclosed district, and the quarter was moved to a new 

site by the Nihon-zutzumi dyke in the Asakusa district, thus adding the prefix Shin or ‘New’ 

to the name. After its relocation, the quarter began to flourish; its initial five-street layout 

expanding to seven to accommodate the growing population, which, in its heyday in the 

early eighteenth century, numbered over 3000 courtesans and kamuro. In addition to the 

women, a daily carnival of brothel owners, shopkeepers, geisha, cooks, servants, attendants,

entertainers, musicians and ‘adventurers and intermediaries of every kind and description’ 

plied the wards for trade [Turk, 1966: p.135]. 

Despite the otherworldly isolation of the quarter and the emphasis on a client’s monetary 

assets rather than his rank, the Yoshiwara nevertheless developed an elaborate system of 

precedence and etiquette as bewildering and stifling as that which dictated the ‘fixed’ world 

outside. This, together with the spiralling costs of hiring a high-class tayû or kôshi, led to the 

emergence of numerous okabasho or unlicensed, illegal pleasure districts where the average 

townsman could afford a more quotidian and unadorned form of prostitution. 

Indeed, by the end of the eighteenth century, the highest ranks of courtesan occupied such a 

super-elevated and financially unobtainable position that the grading system had to be 

changed ~ the lower yobidashi and chûsan classes moving to the top. [Clark, 1992: p.15]. As 

grand courtesans, they occupied houses known as ômagaki after the distinctive lattice 

windows at the entrance. Higher graded women were not expected to display themselves to 

attract clients, however, instead elegantly processing, retinue of kamuro in matching kimono 

trailing behind them, to an ochaya [‘teahouse’] to meet the prosperous customer who had 

ceremonially summoned them. 

Just such a procession can be seen in the right-hand sheet of Kunisada II’s triptych, which 

depicts nine of the most famous courtesans in the Shin Yoshiwara; the decorative cartouche 

containing their mon or device, name and a short poetic encomium. 

The pyramidal arrangement of buckets [in the centre sheet] was a safeguard against the everpresent 

danger of fires, so common they were known as ‘Flowers of Edo’. 

12. Utagawa Kunisada II (1823-1880) 

A Collection of Ôiran inside the Shin Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarters 


Date [Japanese]: First Month of Man-en 2 

Signature: Kunisada-ga 

Censor/Zodiacal Date Seal: Combined aratame [‘examined’] and date seal [tori ichi/ 

cock 1] 

Publisher’s Seal: Chôkichiban [rare] 




Condition: Good 


Code: SOX 


From the same series as the above triptych, the viewer’s perspective has now shifted to 

inside the Yoshiwara. Similarly acting as an idealistic advertisement for the exquisite and 

cultivated women on offer, the work depicts a further set of nine courtesans, with their 

kamuro, languidly engaged in whiling away the time before their next assignations. In these 

types of unproblematic depictions, little was evoked, however, of the seamier and more 

pitiful side of the floating world. 

For the large numbers of often pre-pubescent peasant girls sold into prostitution by their 

impoverished families, the best they could hope for was to become apprenticed as attendants 

to one of the more successful and high-ranking women. In an almost identical pattern to 

geisha, they were trained for a number of years in etiquette and the fine arts, finally making 

their debut as shinzô (the equivalent to maiko), apprentice courtesans, in their later teens. 

Thereafter, the aim was to progress through the hierarchy as rapidly as possible, moving 

from heya-mochi (having their own room) and zashiki-mochi (having their own suite) to 

becoming a full courtesan with servants of their own. After the standard decade of indenture, 

however, the options became rather limited for most women, however beautiful or talented. 

Possibly the happiest outcome of one’s Yoshiwara career would be societal and financial 

redemption by a kind patron, either by becoming his mistress or by running a business 

backed by his gold. All too many former inmates, however, ended their careers in the less

Publisher’s Seal: Sadaoka 

School: Hokusai 

Method: Woodblock surimono; hôsho-gami; embossed background; extensive 

detailing in gold [rich brass] and silver [zinc-rich brass]. 

Format: Shikishiban 

Dimensions: Each impression 8 x 7 1/2 inches 

Code: BH163 

I. Green cartouche, bright red detailing on fan. Some oxidation. 


II. Gold cartouche, faded red detailing on fan. Some soiling and movement of colour. 


The exquisitely elegant and iki [‘cool’] bijin depicted in the upper roundel is probably a 

portrait of a geisha who was a particular favourite of the kyôka poet. This would seem to be 

confirmed by the presence of a fanciful boat-shaped form of the character nao, the first kanji 

of the poet’s name, Naonari Asa-no-ya, both on her fan and on the poetry slip to the right of 

the composition. Naonari’s verse alludes to the central emblem of the auspicious kujaku or 

peacock, a bird often invoked in New Year surimono. It reads 'Tori mo kite asobu hikage no 

nagaki o ni kogane iro masu tama no hatsuharu' [‘The bird come and plays, and the jewelled 

early spring gilds the long tails of the sunbeams]. Interestingly, there was also a well-known 

poetic association between the peacock and the Shin Yoshiwara. At the end of the paddyfields 

behind the quarter, there was situated an old row of houses known as the Kujakunagaya 

(nagaya being a long building with several separate residences). From this rather 

lowly spot, the brilliant spectacle of the pleasure quarters could be seen to great advantage ~ 

the spot thus being compared to the humble body of a peacock, with the dazzling splendour 

of the Yoshiwara as its magnificent tail. 

The two impressions of Bijin to kujaku in the exhibition demonstrate both the variations in 

tone, colour and decoration possible within the small print run of the surimono, and the 

problems of pigment experimentation in terms of long-term preservation. 

19. Yanagawa Shigenobu (1786-1832) 

Ume [Plum Blossom] 

Series: Sanfukyûkaigô [Series of Three Ladies] 

Date [Western]: ca. 1820s 

Date [Japanese]: Bunsei era 

Signature: Artist’s seal 

Carver: Tani Seikô [?] 

School: Hokusai 

Method: Woodblock surimono 


Condition: Fading and rubbing, otherwise good 

Dimensions: 8 x 9 inches 

Code: BH162 


Shigenobu was a pupil of Hokusai, whose daughter he married, subsequently becoming 

adopted into the family. After marital problems forced a separation, however, he returned to 

his own family in Honjo Yanagawa. From the 1810s, he designed approximately thirty 

surimono, mainly for the Tsuru-ren or ‘Crane Group’, and was active as an illustrator of 

yomihon and kyôka poetry anthologies. 

Two kyôka verses decorate this shunkyô [Spring Season] surimono, the first, by Senyôtei 

Zenko, extols the beauty of the ume blossom. The bijin’s robes are decorated with various 

botanical motifs, including irises and wisteria.


Code: SOX 


This relatively rare erotic bijin-ga is one of a twelve-print soroimono matching oiran to the 

different signs of the zodiac and, by extension, to the months of the year. Here, representing 

the sign of the dog or inu, a courtesan is shown tying her koshimaki [lit. ‘hip wrap’ or ‘waist 

roll’]. In early modern Japan, women did not wear underclothing: the tight lines of the 

kosode being ruined by superfluous material. Comprising a two-yard length of thin silk, the 

koshimaki constituted the most intimate layer of clothing and was simply wrapped around 

the waist. 

23. Utagawa Kunisada (Toyokuni III) (1786-1864) 

The Meandering Stream Party [Kyokusui no en or Kyokusui-no-Utage] 


Date [Japanese]: Sixth Month of Kaei 5 

Signature: Toyokuni-ga 

Zodiacal Date Seal: ne roku/rat 6 

Nanushi Censor Seals: Murata [Murata Heiemon] & Muramatsu [Muramatsu 

Genroku] 

Publisher’s Seal: Mori-ji 




Condition: Good, some wear at corners 


Code: SOX 


A mitate or parody of rantei kyokusui [Chinese: Lanting qushui] or ‘meandering stream and 

orchid pavilion’, a iconographical theme which referred to a gathering held in 353 by the 

famous Eastern Jin calligrapher Wang Xishi (Japanese: Ou Gishi [321-79]) at the Orchid 

Pavilion (Japanese: Rantei) in Guiji, Zhejiang. In order to celebrate the annual ‘Spring 

Purification Festival’ (held on the Third Day of the Third Month), Wang Xishi invited fortyone 

scholar-poets to engage in poetry and drinking while seated along the bank of a winding 

rivulet. As an elegant conceit, he arranged for servants to float cups of wine down the 

stream, and those guests who had not yet written a poem before a cup had passed by were 

required to imbibe a penalty cup. The next day, Wang assembled the surprisingly competent 

poems of his inebriated friends and wrote his famous Lanting jixu (Japanese: Rantei Shûjo) 

or ‘Preface to the Orchid Pavilion Compilation’, a melancholy discourse on the meaning of 

life. 

The trope became extremely popular in Chinese painting, and was subsequently equally 

revered by the Japanese. According to both the Nihon shoki and archaeological remains, a 

meandering stream built of stones was constructed in the southeast corner of the eightcentury 

Heijô palace, presumably so that aristocrats could re-enact the ‘meandering stream 

party’ (kyokusui-no-en). 

Paintings of rantei kyokusui typically feature a number of erudite gentlemen seated beside a 

twisting stream. For Sinophile Japanese painters the theme was symbolic of refined scholarly 

pleasure and the humour in Kunisada’s work rests heavily on that perceived esoteric 

aestheticism. 

The triptych wittily and somewhat irreverently depicts one such re-enactment with a group 

of fashionable 1850s bijin (beautiful women) and an exquisitely dressed samurai carrying a 

pipe (probably a pictorial nod towards Prince Genji, although the text does not make this 

association explicit); the jovial vulgarity of the servants wading in the water possibly 

offering an indication of Kunisada’s opinion of the pretentiousness of such gatherings.

Notable paintings of the theme include works by Kanô Sansetsu (1589/90-1651), Nakayama 

Kôyô (1717-80) and Yosa Buson (1716-84). 


Scene from Hatsune [The First Warbler or The First Song], Chapter 23 of Genji 

monogatari [The Tale of Genji] 

Series: Genji gojûyon jô [Fifty-four Pictures of Genji] 


Date [Japanese]: Fifth Month of Kaei 5 


Nanushi Censor Seal: Hama Yahei 

Publisher’s Seal: Sanoki 



Format: Chûban 

Condition; Good, some wear and fading 

Dimensions: 9 3/4 x 7 inches 

Code: SOX 


This very short chapter in the Genji monogatari centres around an exchange of New Year’s 

greetings between Genji and the ladies of the Rokujô Mansion: Lady Murasaki [Murasaki no 

Ue] the Akashi Lady [Akashi no Ue], the Lady of the Orange Blossoms [Hanachirusato], the 

Safflower Lady [Suetsumuhana], and the Lady of the Locust Shell [Utsusemi]. In the 

chapter, Genji receives felicitous New Year delicacies in ‘bearded baskets’ [higeko, baskets 

with the ends of the woven strands left untrimmed] and, as depicted here, a warbler [uguisu] 

on an artificial pine branch, sent by the Akashi Lady, with whom he has a daughter, the 

future Akashi Empress [lower left]. Attached to the branch is a letter with a melancholy 

poem telling of her loneliness. Hatsune motifs are a constant of Japanese iconography, 

particularly within the decorative arts, because of their perceived auspicious symbolism. 


Tori no koku [The ‘Hour’ of the Cock: 5 to 7 pm] 

Cartouche: A Group of Edoites by Toyohara Kunichika (1835-1900) 

Series: Shunyu jûniji [Twelve Hours of Spring Pleasure] 


Date [Japanese]: Third Month of Ansei 3 


Censor Seal: aratame [‘examined’] 

Zodiacal Date Seal: tatsu san/dragon 3 

Publisher’s Seal: Yamaguchiya Tobei 



Format: Single sheet ôban tate-e 



Code: SOX 


In Edo-period Japan, time was not measured in equal units, like the occidental hour. Instead, 

a day was split into day and night time, in accordance with sunrise and sunset, and then 

subsequently sub-divided into a further six segments, which, apart from at the two 

equinoxes, were unequal. The twelve ‘hours’ thus produced corresponded to the zodiacal 

animals used in calendrical numeration, 

Kunisada’s 1856 series explores and contrasts a courtesan’s day with that of the generic Edo 

chônin [townsmen], the latter being depicted in dinner-time scramble within a separate

Censor Seal: Kiwame [‘approved] 

Publisher’s Seal: Eikyudo (also known as Yamamoto-ya Heikichi) 




Condition: Excellent with fine detailing 

Dimensions: 15 x 9 3/4 inches 

Code: SOX 


A courtesan surrounded by the aki-no-nanakusa or ‘Seven Plants of Autumn’, the boundary 

between her kosode and obi rendered deliberately faint, thus suggesting that she too 

represent a seasonal bloom. The plants consisted of hagi [bushclover], susuki [pampas 

grass], kikyô [Chinese bellflower], kuzu [arrowroot] ominaeshi [maidenflower], nadeshiko 

[pinks or wild carnations] and fujibakama [boneset]. 

First mentioned collectively in a poem by Yamanoue no Okura (ca. 660-733) from the 

eighth-century Man’yôshû [ca. 750], they were often contrasted with the ‘Seven Grasses of 

Spring’ or haru-no-nanakusa. According to De Becker [1899: p.226], yûjo of the Yoshiwara 

often set out artificial representations of the aki-no-nanakusa in their rooms, the displays 

intending to evoke autumnal fields, thus setting a wistful seasonal atmosphere for their 

customers. 

28. Kikugawa Eizan (1787-1867) 

Flirting in the Street of Fabric Shops, Odemmachô Quarter 


Date [Japanese]: Tempô era 

Signature: Kikugawa Eizen-hitsu 


Method: Aizuri-e woodblock 


Condition: Good, some fading and slight rubbing on corners 


Code: SOX 


The fabric sellers’ quarter in Edo was centred on Momendana [‘The Great Post Station’], as 

the First Street in the Odenmachô was popularly known. Situated next to the Nihonbashi 

[‘The Bridge of Japan’], the departure point for journeys along the Tôkaidô and the hub of 

mercantile Edo, Momendana had been associated with textiles from the Genroku period. By 

Eisen’s day, First Street boasted around fifty wholesale stores, stretching in an unbroken line 

on either side of the road, each business identifiable only by curtains [noren] emblazoned 

with the trader’s name. 

In Eisen’s print, possibly once part of a triptych, a cross-section of Shitamachi [‘Low City’] 

life bustles along the Momendana: a townswoman selects rolls of material from an eager 

salesman, a beauty dressed in a seasonal iris-patterned kosode (indicating the Fifth Month), 

flanked by her maids, flirts with a handsome samurai, holding a fan picked up at the latest 

kabuki performance, and, surveying the scene, a wealthy merchant’s wife is transported in a 

kago [palanquin] by half-stripped bearers, sweating in the summer heat. As one proverb had 

it: 'The person who rides in the kago, the men who bear it; pain in the lower back, pain in the 

shoulders.' 

The distinctive aizuri technique, which entailed repeated printings in multiple shadings of 

blue, was devised in 1842 to circumvent the draconian governmental sumptuary reforms. 

Aside from banning the colourful nishiki-e or ‘brocade’ prints, they also forbad the portrayal 

of yûjo, geisha and other demimondaines, which explains Eisen’s choice of a quotidian street 

scene ~ the beauty and iki of the women merely hinting at the models’ nightime occupations.

29. Keisai Eisen (1790-1848) 

A Courtesan Composing the First Letter of the New Year 



Signature: Hokutei [?] 


Method: Woodblock surimono with karazuri and laquering 


Condition: Some fading and rubbing 

Dimensions: 8 x 7 1/4 inches [20 x 18 cm] 

Code: BH158 


This saitan surimono depicts an elaborately dressed courtesan, writing brush in one hand, 

struggling with a winding scroll, on which she has begun to compose her first love letter of 

the New Year. A lacquered suzuribako [‘writing box’] with ink stone and brushes lies at her 

feet. The child, oblivious to her travails, has made an origami bird, in imitation of those 

decorating the kosode hanging at the edge of the composition. The kyôka verse is by 

Henfukuan. 

30. Keisai Eisen (1790-1848) 

Courtesan by the Sumida River 

Date [Western]: ca. 1830 


Signature: Eisen-ga 

Publisher’s Seal: Sanoya Kihei 


Method: Woodblock print 


Condition: Creasing, wormage, staining and general wear; particularly extensive in 

lower right corner 


Code: SOX 


Similar in composition to Eisen’s earlier series Tosei Goban Shima (Five Islands of the 

Present Day), this bijin-ga shows a courtesan at the edge of the Sumida-gawa [Sumida 

River] in Edo. The overhanging pine is probably the Shubi-no-Matsu [‘The Successful 

Conclusion Pine’], one of the famous pines of Edo, prolifically depicted within Edo meishoe 

[‘Pictures of Famous Places in Edo’]. It entered the city’s fertile imagination for having a 

shape like a dragon, its wide branches spreading out over the river below. Its unusual name 

came from its association with returning visitors from the Shin Yoshiwara pleasure district, 

located further down the river. In the early hours of the morning, it became the custom to 

stop by the pine and relate the events of the night passed in the ‘green quarters’ - a more 

literary group of returnees perhaps even devising a suitable poem or epigram on their 

romantic adventures. In a layering of meaning typical to Ukiyo-e, the matsu imagery may 

also relate to the courtesan’s green house: the Matsu-ya being a principal brothel in the 

Yoshiwara district.

31. Keisai Eisen (1790-1848) 

Fukurokuju with Two Oiran 

Date [Western]: 1822 or 1834 

Date [Japanese]: Busei/Tempô eras 

Signature: Eisen-ga 


Method: Woodblock surimono with gauffrage and detailing in gold 


Condition: Good, some fading 


Code: BH170 


This New Year saitan surimono conveys greetings for the Year of the Horse [uma], which 

is alluded to by the pattern on the right-hand bijin’s kosode and by the miniature hobbyhorse 

in her lap. Seated benignly between the two oiran [courtesans] is the god of wisdom, 

felicitous long life and popularity, Fukurokuji, one of the Shichifukujin [Seven Lucky 

Gods], who were closely associated with the Shôgatsu [New Year] celebrations. Eisen has 

depicted him according to the traditional formula, as a smiling old gentleman, short in 

stature with a high forehead (indicating his intelligence) and bushy whiskers, carrying a 

hand-scroll tied to a flat fan. Although beloved in Japan, Fukurokuji was originally a 

Chinese deity thought to be an embodiment of the South Pole stars. 

Kyôka verses by, from right to left, Tôkatei Toyû, Senkakutei Hyakunin and Kyôkatei, 

surround the figures, elegantly alluding to the New Year. 

32. Utagawa Kuniyasu (1794-1832) 

Cherry Blossom in the Shin Yoshiwara Pleasure District at the Height of its Prosperity 

[Tôto Yoshiwara Zensei] 

Date [Western]: ca.1830 

Date [Japanese]: ca. Tempô 1 

Signature: Kuniyasu-ga 

Publisher’s Seal: Tsuru-ya Kiemon 

Censor Seal: Kiwame [‘approved’] 




Condition: Reasonable, some evidence of block wear 


Code: SOX 


Kuniyasu Utagawa was born in Edo and trained as a pupil of Toyokuni I. He is particularly 

known for his surimono and his bijin-ga. 

In Kuniyasu’s vibrant print, the Shin Yoshiwara’s most coveted courtesans, surrounded by 

admirers, are seen promenading along the famous Naka-no-chô [‘Middle Street’] during 

the annual cherry-blossom festival held in the first week of the third month [roughly, the 

beginning of April]. At the centre of the composition, surrounded by a bamboo fence, is 

the quarter’s famous cherry tree, depicted in numerous ukiyo-e works and replete with 

symbolism relating to the transient nature of a courtesan’s life. Indeed, the association of 

the courtesan to the sakura or cherry blossom was such that inscribed on the Ômon [‘great 

gateway’] of the quarter was the following line: “A Dream of Spring-tide when the streets 

are full of cherry blossom’. An allusion to a Chinese poem immortalizing a womanizing 

emperor, it recalled the hundreds of verses penned in Edo and Meiji periods comparing the 

Yoshiwara beauties to blossom: ‘Cherries of the night which bloom luxuriantly,” praises

one, another dramatically describes the ‘Dream of Spring, in a town inhabited by beautiful 

and voluptuous women to whom their lovers cleave as the commingling blossoms of the 

cherry bond together’ [See De Becker, 1899, 1971: pp.19-20]. 

33. Andô Hiroshige (1797-1858) 

Tamagawa zutsumi no hana [Cherry Trees in Bloom along the Embankment of the Tama 

River] 

Series: Meisho Edo Hyakkei [A Hundred Famous Views of Edo] 

Series Number: 42 of 120 [inc. Title Page and a replacement print by Hiroshige II] 



Signature: Hiroshige-ga 





Condition: Good impression; some creasing and rubbing 


Code: SOX 


Located in the district of Shinjuku, in the western fringes of Edo (modern Tôkyô), the 

Tamagawa was a twenty-mile-long canal that supplied a major part of the city’s population 

with drinking water [Uspensky, 1997: p.102]. In the 1850s, the canal banks were studded 

with the grand properties of daimyô, juxtaposed with inns, shops, eating-houses and various 

open air amusements ~ a fluid conflation of fixed and floating worlds, which owed 

something to the liminal situation of this border ward, placed right on the edges of the 

capital. 

To the left of the image is the entrance to the mansion of the Naito clan, who had originally 

owned the entire Shinjuku estate and who inadvertently transformed its fortunes. Having 

granted land to six retainers, an equivalent number of mansions were built, prompting the 

name Rokkenmachi or ‘The Six-House Quarter’ [Ibid]. In the Genroku period (1688-1704), 

a group of wealthy merchants applied to the landowners for permission to open inns and tea 

houses along the canal; a successful bid which transformed the watery neighbourhood into a 

little floating world known as Naito-Shinjuku, ‘The New Houses on the Naito Estate.’ It 

subsequently developed into one of the most popular ‘play’ [asobi] zones in Edo, a 

distinction which it retains today. To the right of the composition, directly facing the 

venerable Naito complex, a group of meshimori no onna can be seen, enjoyed the fresh river 

breezes on a veranda of a tea shop. Representing another layer of the mizu-shôbai or ‘water 

trade’, meshimori ostensibly acted solely as hostesses or entertainers, in reality, however, 

they offered a more approachable and affordable service than their sisters in the licensed 

quarters to the east. 

34. Utagawa Sadakage (fl. ca. 1820s-1830s) 

Courtesan from the Sôrôkan [House of the Blue Waves] drinking warm sake 


Date [Japanese]: Bunsei era 

Signature: Gokotei Sadakage-ga 


Method: Woodblock surimono with gauffrage and detailing in silver. 



Condition: Excellent with slight colour-fading 

Code: BH169 

Price [Mounted]: £450

One of a series of three small portraits of maiko wearing the same furisode kimono, possibly 

indicating their allegiance to the same okiya [Cat. No.: 44-47]. These extremely young girls 

would have been in the first or second years of training, their makeup [note the application 

of a small circle of crimson safflower petal lipstick to the lower lip], attire, and hairstyles all 

appropriate to maiko at the outset of their careers. 

44. Anonymous Photographer 

Portrait of a Seated Maiko [Maiko no kaojashin] 


Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 13 

Method: Silver print 

Dimensions: 5 1/4 x 3 3/4 inches 

Code: AD28 



Portrait of a Maiko [Maiko no kaojashin] 





Code: AD26 



Portrait of a Geisha [Geisha no kaojashin] 





Code: AD35 


A portrait of a young geisha wearing a formal black five-crested tomesode kimono, patterned 

with the mon of her oki-ya. 


Portrait of Two Maiko Studying an Album of Photographs 





Code: AD29 


Two senior maiko with ofuku hairstyles. wearing elaborate furisode-style kimono, adopt the 

established pose of examining a picture book. 

From the front, the ofuku style resembles the wareshinobu coiffure, worn at a maiko’s debut. 

At the back, however, the forms diverge, with the kanoko (red spotted silk ribbon, evoking 

the markings of a young deer) of the wareshinobu, being replaced by a tegarami. [a piece of 

silk material] The triangular tegarami, is pinned rather than woven to the bottom of the mage 

[bun]: the final effect being that of a split peach or momoware, the alternative name of the 

hairstyle. Traditionally, the adoption of the ofuku signified the sexual transition of the maiko, 

either through the ritualized passage of the mizuage [loss of virginity] or the formal 

attentions of a patron or danna.


Gaicha de Yokohama 

Date [Western]: ca. 1875-78 

Date [Japanese]: Meiji period 

Method: Hand-tinted albumen print 

Dimensions: 8 x 5 3/4 inches 

Condition: Slight, restored tear in lower centre 

Code: AD33 


One of two photographs in the exhibition from a nineteenth-century French album [see also, 

Cat. No. 49, below], this depicts a geisha and a maiko, probably sisters from the same okiya, 

in a tatami-matted room, re-enacting the preparations for a zashiki [‘a banquet room’; used 

as a term for an engagement]. The kneeling geisha is assisting her onêsan in tying her heavy 

obi [sash]. 

During the Edo period, while the form of the kimono scarcely changed, the obi appeared in a 

variety of ties and widths, marking trends in fashion and denoting one’s place in both fixed 

and floating world hierarchies. It appears that the weave evolved as well, shifting in around 

1800, from the pliant fabric evident in prints by, for example, Harunobu (ca.1724-1770), to 

the stiff, elaborate, ‘tapestry’ cloth favoured by Kunisada’s bjin [see, for example, Cat. No.: 

1-3]. From this point onwards, it came to dominate a woman’s ensemble, so much so that, as 

Dalby [1983: p.297] puts it ‘the kimono [became] merely a backdrop for the obi.’ 

Thus, for the contemporary art historian, the pattern, colour and arrangement of the obi is 

one of the key iconographical elements used in determining the societal and professional 

positioning of its wearer. High-ranking yûjo characteristically tied their obi at the front in the 

style of married women, to visually suggest that they were ‘married’ to their clients for the 

night. The less salubrious explanation being that having the unwieldy obi front-tied, 

facilitated expeditious dressing and undressing. 


Kamisan de Tokio 


Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 8-11 

Method: Albumen print 


Code: AD34 


An extremely rare portrait study of a Okami-san or mistress of an ochaya [teahouse], 

wearing a formal black five-crested tomesode. Okami-san were retired geisha who, although 

still occasionally attending banquets, performing and entertaining clients, presided over the 

complex administration of the flower and willow world. 

In the latter half of the nineteenth century, the most famous and exclusive hanamachi in 

Tôkyô were located in Shimbashi and Asakusa. The former, in particular, being a nerve 

centre for the increasingly influential militarists in the Meiji government ~ their celebrations 

and parties played out within the teahouses of the quarter. Thus, the ostensibly dowdy and 

commonplace okamisan depicted in this unusually intimate photograph, would have been 

privy to, and in some respects orchestrated, some of the most important political gatherings 

of the age. 

50. Anonymous Japanese Photographer 

A Study of a Maiko in an Garden 



Method: Albumen print


Code: AD32 


A rare naturalistic outdoor study of a senior maiko, or possibly a debuting geisha, wearing 

lacquered okubo [high clogs]. Their distinctive sound, resonating throughout the floating 

world, entered the Japanese language as the onomatopoeia koppori or pokkuri. 

51. Anonymous Photographer, possibly Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) 

On Snowing [Geisha in a Two-passenger Jinrikisha] 




Dimensions: 7 3/4 x 10 1/4 inches [Image] 

Code: SOX 


The jinrikisha [lit. man-powered vehicle] or rickshaw first appeared in Tôkyô in 1870. An 

invention variously ascribed to Jonathan Goble, an American Baptist missionary, and to 

Izumi Yosuke, Suzuki Tokujiro, and Takayama Kosuke, the group of enterprising Japanese 

townsmen who obtained the first manufacturing license, the jinrikisha quickly replaced the 

kago [palanquin] as the transportation of choice for the urban masses of the Meiji period. 

According to a contemporary report in the Shinbun Zasshi newspaper, its rise in popularity 

was such that by 1872, only two years after the first passengers were gingerly stepping into 

the early prototypes, over 40, 000 were plying their trade in the capital’s streets. 

From its inception, it was constructed in one- and two-passenger versions, the latter swiftly 

becoming identified with trysts and romantic intimacy, inspiring popular songs such as 

Ainori Horokake (‘Beneath a Hood for Two’) and Hoppeta Ottsuke (‘Cheek Pressed to 

Cheek’). As such, it became a mainstay of early photographer’s studios: here, two young 

geisha pose amidst a carefully constructed winter scene. 

52. Felice Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908) 

Japonais dans son intérier [Geisha holding an ebony kiseru [pipe], surrounded by the 

symbols of her art ~ shamisen, koto and tea kettle] 

Date [Western]: ca.1880-1883 

Date [Japanese]: ca. Meiji 13-16 

Method: Hand-tinted albumen silver photograph 

Studio Location: Yokohama 

Dimensions: 10 x 7 3/4 inches [Image] 

Code: AD1 


Felice Beato was arguably the most important foreign figure working in the field of Japanese 

photography in the late nineteenth century. One of the originators of photojournalism, he 

travelled to India in 1857, taking what are retrospectively considered to be the definitive 

images of the Indian Mutiny, and then to East Asia in 1860, becoming the first Western 

photographer to work in China, as he followed and recorded the British army during the 

Second Opium War. Previously he had worked as an assistant to James Robertson, whose 

body of work in the Crimea, to which Beato contributed, is generally defined as the first 

distinct example of objective war photojournalism. 

Beato was probably born in Corfu, then a Venetian territory, but at some point he and his 

brother Antonio (or Antoine) Beato (ca.1830-ca.1903), both became British citizens. This 

was a period when Britain welcomed political exiles and many Italian nationalists, such as 

the Rossetti family, were living and working in London. Antonio Beato was also a keen 

photographer and the two brothers worked together on a number of occasions, signing their 

collaborative works Felice Antonio Beato; later problematizing the identification of

photographs taken at the same time in different locations. For the majority of his working 

life, however, Antonio resided in Egypt, running a flourishing studio specializing in the 

photography of antiquities. 

Beato arrived in Japan in around 1862, living in Yokohama from 1863 to 1884. He initially 

joined Charles Wirgman, an ex-patriot since 1861; the two forming a partnership entitled 

‘Beato & Wirgman, Artists and Photographers’ during the years 1864–1867. A trained 

watercolourist, Wirgman developed a technique of adding colour washes to his albumen 

prints; a technical advance which greatly contributed to the popularity of the partners’ 

oeuvre, particularly amongst Occidental collectors already enamoured of the sophisticated 

colouring present in woodblock prints. Before long, the studio was inundated with work 

and, to satisfy demand, Beato began to employ Japanese Ukiyo-e colourists. Organized as a 

production line, they could complete 20 or 30 high-quality prints a day, a number which was 

quickly absorbed by the gaijin travellers, merchants and who flocked to Beato’s emporium. 

Beato's Japanese photographs include bijin portraits, genre works, landscapes, cityscapes 

and, consciously recalling Hiroshige and Hokusai, a number of meisho-e documenting the 

scenery and sites along the Tôkaidô. 

Despite his large output, Beato's images are remarkable not only for their quality, but for 

their rarity as photographic views of a lost Japan at the brink of cataclysmic change. 

53. Felice Beato (ca. 1825-ca.1908) 

Portrait of a Geisha 


Date [Japanese]: Bunkyû 3 

Method: Hand-coloured albumen print 

Code: AD36 


This extremely rare photograph was made just after Beato arrived in Yokohama, and was 

one of the first albumen prints to be hand-coloured using the method devised by Beato’s 

partner, Wirgman. One of the earliest extant photographs of a geisha; it represents a 

historical artefact of great import, offering us an unprecedented vignette of the Edo 

demimondaine. 

54. Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Ratenicz (1839-1911) 

Geisha playing a Shamisen 


Date [Japanese]: Meiji 8 

Method: Hand-tinted albumen silver photograph 

Studio Location: 

Dimensions: 9 1/2 x 8 inches [Image] 

References: Hugh Cortazzi & Terry Bennett, Japan Caught in Time (New York: 

Weatherhill, 1995) 

Code: AD2 


Born in Chomutov, now in the Czech Republic, Stillfried moved to Yokohama in the early 

1870s, where he established a photographic studio entitled ‘Stillfried & Co.’ which traded 

under that name until 1875. In that year, Stillfried began to collaborate with another 

photographer named Hermann Andersen, of whom little is known. The studio was 

subsequently renamed ‘Stillfried & Andersen’ or the ‘Japan Photographic Association’, 

successfully as operating as a joint enterprise until 1885. In 1877, the partners purchased the 

stock of Felice Beato and moved into his larger studio. While based in Japan, the peripatetic 

Stillfried also made a number of working trips to Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Greece, later 

producing a collection of important images of Mexico [see Luke Gartlan, Remembering 

Imperial Mexico: Baron Stillfried's Photographs of Miramar Castle (1885)'2003].

A figure of import in the development of Japanese photography, Stillfried widened the arena 

of imagery considered suitable for photographic treatment; his subjects ranging from 

marketable portraits of geisha and courtesans to the sensitive documentation of unusual 

medical ailments [such as, for example, his study of Elephantiasis, ca. 1870s]. He also 

provided training for many Japanese artists, most notably Kusakabe Kimbei, to whom he 

sold the majority of his stock upon his departure from Japan in 1886. 

In the Japanese imagination, the three-stringed shamisen was one of the iconic 

accoutrements of the Flower and Willow trade. Introduced from China via Korea in the 

1560s, within a century it had become the principal instrument of the newly emerged figure 

of the geisha. As Dalby [1983; 2000: p. 259] points out, ‘Whenever one heard a shamisen, 

one heard the music of the city-dwelling merchant class…the upper classes did not play (and 

were not supposed to listen to) the plaintive and sentimental lyrics that went with shamisen 

tunes.’ As the quintessential sound of the Floating World, the instrument was frequently 

subject to governmental bans, but nevertheless was played and enjoyed everywhere, as such 

becoming the most necessitous attribute of a working geisha. As an old geisha saying had it: 

Sanbon ga areba, taberareru [‘If you’ve got three strings, you can eat’]. 

55. Adolfo Farsari (1841-1898) 

Three Maiko posing on an Engawa [veranda]. 




Dimensions: 10 x 8 inches [Image] 

References: Tony Bennett, Early Japanese Images, (Tôkyô: Charles E.Tuttle, 1995) 

Code: JO/AD24 


Adolfo Farsari was born in the town of Vicenza, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

A fervent abolitionist, he travelled to America in 1863, enlisting in the Union army as a 

cavalry soldier during the Civil War. He moved to Yokohama in 1877 to set up trading as a 

tobacco merchant, but soon became fascinated by the aesthetic and financial possibilities of 

photography. In 1885, he bought the Japan Photographic Association studio from Baron von 

Stillfried, a transaction that included not only valuable negatives by the Baron and Beato, but 

also fifteen skilled colourists. However, this initial good fortune was marred by a devastating 

fire which destroyed his entire stock. Nevertheless, it was quickly reproduced by the stoic 

Farsari in a matter of months and, bolstered by the popularity of the ‘Yokohama Shashin’ 

culture, his business continued to flourish. He subsequently moved his studio to the original 

location of the Yokohama Photographic Company. The resultant A. Farsari & Company 

would eventually become one of Japan’s largest photography studios, with, at one point, 

over forty Japanese artists associated with the business. When Fasari eventually returned to 

Italy in 1890, his studios continued to trade until 1917, becoming the last Western-owned 

photographic house in Japan. 

To his contemporaries, Fasari was known principally for his extraordinary use of naturalistic 

colour, Rudyard Kipling noting this aspect of Farsari's work in 1889 when he advised his 

readers: 

‘Though expensive and perhaps you end up penniless, unless you are already penniless, in 

Japan you have to buy photographs and the best are from the Farsari & Co. studio, known 

from Saigon to America. Farsari is a nice and eccentric chap; he has the soul of an artist and 

these are qualities to pay for but his stuff is worth the price. A coloured photo makes you 

think of a horror and it normally is so, however Farsari knows how to colour well and can 

reproduce the light tones of that beautiful country. From over the bridge on the ship I was 

laughing at his red and blue hills but once I reached there I realized that what he had painted 

was real.’ [Quoted in Hugh Cortezzi, Kipling’s Japan, p.102]

56. Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) 

A Rainy Night [I] 

Date [Western]: ca. 1880s [Image produced ca. 1870s] 


Method: Hand tinted albumen photograph 


Code: SOX 


Born to a family of textile merchants in Kofu, Yamanashi Prefecture in 1841, Kusakabe 

Kimbei (professionally known by his given name, Kimbei, considered easier for his foreign 

clients to pronounce than Kusakabe) became one of the most accomplished and 

commercially successful Japanese photographers of his time. 

At the age of 17 or 18, he moved to Yokohama, where, in 1863, he became an assistant, 

possibly a colourist, in the Beato’s studio. The Venetian’s influence upon the young Kimbei 

seems to have been extremely beneficial and within a relatively short period of time, the 

latter became skilled enough to begin an apprenticeship in the 1870s with the equally 

admired von Stillfried. 

After a number of years, Kimbei established his own studio on Benten-dori in Yokohama, 

which operated until 1881. He later moved to Honchô, also in Yokohama, where he opened 

‘Kimbei Photo Studio.’ His increased commercial success also enabled him to open branch 

studios in both Yokohama and Tôkyô and a retail shop in Ginza. 

After von Stillfried left Japan in 1883, Kimbei acquired his collection of glass plate 

negatives, which also comprised a number of plates by Beato, purchased with his studio in 

1877. Kimbei subsequently reprinted the work of his mentors along with his own 

photographs; often including them in mixed albums destined for the tourist and export trade, 

disseminating his constructed vision of Japan to a fascinated West, eager for images of the 

newly-accessible country. 

The import of Kusakabe Kimbei lies in his conflation of elements of both the Western 

psychological or anthropological approach, and the highly codified Japanese aesthetic. In 

this way, despite the wistful nostalgia and tourist-trade pandering that colours a great deal of 

his oeuvre, particularly within his choice of studio subjects, he nevertheless managed to 

develop a vibrant, symbiotic genre, which set the focus of Japanese photography for many 

decades to come. 

Aside from photograph albums, he also produced collotype prints and lantern slides, 

primarily for the export market and his became one of the first Japanese-owned studios to 

import and sell photography equipment and supplies. 

Kimbei retired from photography in 1914 and took up Japanese painting in his later years. 

He died in Hyôgo Prefecture in 1934. 

This studio photograph represents one of two included in the exhibition [Cat. No: 57] from a 

series of women and children posing with amagusa [umbrellas] in various studio sets. Here, 

a bijin wearing an okoso-zukin [hood] and holding a paper hand lantern poses against an 

elaborate Fuji-dominated backdrop, possibly designed by Farsari. 

57. Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) 

A Rainy Night [II] 

Date [Western]: ca. 1880s [Image produced ca. 1870s] 


Method: Hand tinted albumen photograph 

Negative Number: 1057 


Code: SOX 


A woman struggles with an amagusa against an imaginary rainstorm. The similarity of this 

pose to those of figures in haku'u [‘sudden shower’] woodblock prints such as Hiroshige’s A

GLOSSARY 

asobi: ‘Play’: from the verb asobu 

bakufu: Military government, dominated in the Edo period (1615-1868) by the Tokugawa 

family 

bijin: A beautiful woman 

bijin-ga: Pictures of beautiful women 

chatate onna: Literally, ‘tea-brewing women’: waitresses 

chônin: Literally, ‘town dweller’: townsmen, of the merchant or artisan classes 

danna: A patron of a geisha 

desho: A geisha’s most formal kimono 

Edo-jidai: The Edo or Tokugawa period (1615-1868) 

enkai: A banquet 

eri: A stiff decorative collar 

erikae o suru: ‘To turn one’s collar’: the figurative expression marking the change from 

maiko to geisha. 

furisode: The ‘swinging-sleeve’ kimono worn by unmarried girls and, by extension, maiko 

ga: ‘drawn by’ 

gei: Art 

geiko: The Kyôto term for geisha 

Genji mon: Codified patterns or devices relating to separate chapters of the Genji 

monogatari 

Genji monogatari: ‘The Tale of Genji,’ a novel written in the beginning of the eleventh 

century by a female writer, Murasaki Shikibu (978-1016) 

geta: Wooden sandals 

giri: Honour, obligation, duty 

hanadai: Literally, ‘flower money’: a geisha’s wages 

haori: A jacket worn over kimono 

hashi-jôro: Lower-ranking courtesan, originally second-grade 

hitsu: ‘From the brush of’ 

hôkan: Comedians who entertained pleasure-quarter women and their clients 

iki: Chic or cool; stylishness 

Kabuki: Popular theatre which began in the seventeenth century 

kamuro: Young female pages 

Kanô: Official school of painting, in attendance to the Tokugawa shogunate 

karyûkai: ‘The flower and willow world’, a term for geisha culture and society 

kiseru: A long-stemmed pipe 

kitsune: foxes, associated with the agricultural deity, Inari 

kôshi-jôro: High-ranking courtesan, just under tayû in grade 

koto: Thirteen-stringed ‘harp’ 

kyôka: Literally ‘crazy verse’. Thirty-one syllable comic or parodic poetry 

Miyako: Kyôto, the Imperial Capital. 

magaki: Lattice work used in the facades of Yoshiwara green houses 

maiko: Apprentice Kyôto geisha, now used generically 

mizu shôbai: Literally, ‘The Water Trade,’ used to describe the multifarious businesses 

involved in the pleasure or entertainment industries that are subject to fluctuations of income 

or personnel [See Dalby: 2000, p.341] 

mon: A crest or insignia, traditionally associated with high-ranking families, they were 

adopted by floating world actors and courtesans 

monogatari: Story or tale 

nishiki-e: ‘Brocade picture’: full colour woodblock print, perfected in the latter half of the 

eighteenth century 

ochaya: A teahouse 

ôban: The most common large size of woodblock print 

obi: Decorative sash worn with a kimono. 

okami-san: Proprietress of a teahouse 

okâsan: ‘Mother’: name used by geisha for teahouse managers

okiya: A geisha house 

oiran: Literally, ‘castle-topplers’: the general term for the highest-ranking and most 

desirable courtesans 

rônin: Literally ‘wave men’: masterless samurai 

sakura: Cherry blossom 

seirô: A ‘green house’ or brothel 

senryû: An epigrammatic seventeen-syllable verse 

seppuku: A form of ritual suicide through disembowelment 

shamisen [samisen]: Three-stringed ‘banjo’ widely played by popular entertainments, 

particularly geisha 

shinzô: The equivalent to senior maiko in the hierachy of the courtesan: grown-up female 

attendants 

shokudai: Candlestick or candlestand 

shushoku [teshoku]: A portable candlestick 

soroimono: A set of ukiyo-e prints published in a series with a common title 

surimono: De luxe, small edition woodblock prints, often commissioned by poetry clubs. 

tate-e: Aprint in horizontal/portrait format. Yoko-e stands for an ukiyo-e print in landscape 

format 

tayû: Highest-ranking courtesan in a brothel; now used generically as an equivalent to oiran 

ukiyo: The ‘floating world’ 

ukiyo-e: Pictures of the ‘floating world’ 

yobidashi: Highest-ranking courtesan, replacing tayû, when they priced themselves out of 

the competitive market 

yarite: Older women who acted as chaperones to oiran 

Yoshiwara: The principal licensed pleasure quarter in Edo. Renamed Shin [New] Yoshiwara 

in 1857 

yûjo: A ‘woman of pleasure’ or prostitute 

zashiki: A banquet room or an engagement with a client 

Edo or Tokugawa Period (1615-1868) 

An'ei (1772-1781) 

Tenmei (1781-1789) 

Kansei (1789-1801) 

Kyôwa (1801-1804) 

Bunka 1804-1818) 

Bunsei (1818-1830) 

Tenpô (1830-1844) 

Kôka (1844-1848) 

Kaei (1848-1854) 

Ansei (1854-1860) 

Man'en (1860-1861) 

Bunkyû (1861-1864) 

Genji (1864-1865) 

Keiô (1865-1868) 

Meiji (1868-1912) 

Taishô (1912-1926) 

JAPANESE ERA NAMES

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Aihara, Kyoko. Geisha: A Living Tradition (London: Carlton Books, 2000) 

Bowie, Theodore. Art of the Surimono (Indiana University Press, 1979) 

De Becker, J. E. The Nightless City, or The History of the Yoshiwara Yûkaku (Charles E. 

Tuttle, Tokyo, 1971). 

Chamberlain, Basil Hall. Japanese Things; Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with 

Japan (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1971) 

Clark, Timothy. Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1992) 

Dalby, Liza. Geisha (London: Vintage, 2000) 

Dower, John W. The Elements of Japanese Design (Tokyo: Weatherhill, 1971) 

Downer, Lesley. Women of the Pleasure Quarters (London: Broadway Books, 2001) 

Fujimoto, T. The Nightside of Japan (London: T. Werner Laurie, Ltd, 1914) 

Halford, Aubrey and Giovanna M. The Kabuki Handbook (Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1956) 

Hibbett, Howard. The Floating World in Japanese Literature (Tokyo: Charles A. Tuttle, 

1959) 

Iwasaki, Mineko. Geisha, A Life (Atria Books, 2002) 

Lane, Richard. Images from the Floating World (Secaucus: Chartwell Books, 1978) 

Perkins, P. D. The Geisha of Pontochô (Tokyo: Tokyo News Service, 1954) 

Scott, A. C. The Flower and Willow World (London: Orion Press, 1960) 

Screech, Timon. Sex and the Floating World: Erotic Images in Japan, 1700-1820 (Honolulu: 

University of Hawaii Press, 1999) 

------. The Lens Within the Heart: The Western Scientific Gaze and Popular Imagery in Later 

Edo Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002) 

------. Shogun's Painted Culture: Fear and Creativity in the Japanese States, 1760-1829 

(Reaktion Books, 2002) 

Segawa Seigle, Cecilia. Yoshiwara: The Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan 

(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1993) 

Shikibu, Murasaki. The Tale of Genji [Trans. Edward G. Seidensticker] (London: Penguin, 

1976) 

Smith, Lawrence. Ukyo-e: Images of Unknown Japan (London: British Museum, 1988) 

Uspensky, Mikhail. Hiroshige: One Hundred Views of Edo (London: Parkstone, 1997)

浮世の花 - Sanders of Oxford

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