Page 380 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

scape setting of Kano paintings, now being displaced by genre interests, can soon be folded away to
make room for screens devoted to the human figure.
Like figures on a Grecian urn, the silent subjects are frozen in a tableau that overall suggests
a scene of music, game playing, and romance, yet they are caught in the frustrating limbo of amorous
anticipation never to be fulfilled. The female faces are as timeless and inexpressive as the Zo onna no
mask. To contemplate the Hikone Screen at length brings on a faint discomfort reminiscent of the original
connotation of the word ukiyoe. It was at first written with characters meaning "sorrowful world" rather
than the more buoyant "floating world." The earlier interpretation relies on a Buddhist philosophy that
saw suffering in the transience of all worldly phenomena, including human relations. The later sense
of the word seized on a hedonistic enjoyment of pleasures here and now. 379

Another pivotal work in the history of the depiction of individual female figures is an anonymous
painting of the early seventeenth century evocatively titled The Rope Curtain (cat. 234). Here we see a
courtesan, presumably of high rank by virtue of her elegant dress and elaborate coiffure, pausing at the
door of a bordello, perhaps bidding farewell to a client. A patron of the pleasure quarters of the age —
the same kind of person who would commission such a scene — might feel a certain wistfulness at the

cat. 234
The Rope Curtain,
c. 16403, two-panel folding screen
(left panel added at later date);
ink, color, and gold on paper,
7
each 159.7 x 180.6 (62 /s x 71 Ys),
The Arc-en-Ciel
Foundation, Tokyo,
Important Cultural Property