Page 452 - Edo: Art in Japan, 1615–1868

2 56 257
Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1754-1806) Kitagawa Utamaro (c. 1754-1806)
The Mosquito Net Two Women Preparing Sashimi

c. 1797 c. 1798-1799
Color woodblock print Color woodblock print with mica
3
7
Approx. 37.5 x 25 (i4 /4 x 9 /s) 38.1 x 25.4 (15 x 10)
Tokyo National Museum Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Important Art Object Gift of the Frederick Weisman
Company
• A courtesan gazes through a
mosquito net at her young male com- • Two women are busy preparing
panion, who holds a pipe. Utamaro sashimi for a banquet. The younger
took great delight in experimenting woman, whose smaller size and 451
with the visual effects of viewing brighter clothes are the sole indication
figures through the veil of semitrans- of her relative youth, grates a large
parent mosquito nets, paper or radish. Printed mica makes the raw
bamboo screens, and gauze fabrics. fish sparkle, indicating its freshness.
The idea of a slightly restricted view This print belongs to a group of
intensifies the suggestion of voyeurism designs showing scenes of domestic
and erotic subtlety. This image closely life published by Orniya Gonkuró
recalls the artist's series Model Young around the turn of the eighteenth
Women Woven in Mist, published a century, most of which show a scene
few years earlier by Tsutaya Jüzaburó, of a mother with a baby or child. As
where women are depicted half-length, with the following print (cat. 258),
one inside and one outside semi- this image should not be viewed as a
transparent material of various types. completely innocent expression of
The phrase "woven in mist," while harmonious home life. The exposed
recalling that polychrome prints are breast teases the male voyeur of
also known as "brocade prints" this domestic scene, and the thick,
(nishifeie), suggests that the images of long daikon radish, commonly
women seen through translucent used in Japanese cooking, has erotic
screens are partly obscured as though connotations. JTC
wrapped in spring mists. Pursuing
the theme here, the artist shows the
courtesan in three-quarter length but
now with a male admirer.

256 The print belongs to a small group of
three-quarter-length portraits pro-
duced about 1797 and published by
Moriya Jihei. Each of the prints experi-
ments with clever optical or lighting
effects created by viewing figures
through translucent materials, in a
mirrored reflection, or illuminated by
a lantern on a rainy night. JTC