Yoshiiku: Courtesans in a teahouse
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Yoshiiku: Courtesans in a teahouse
Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge
Yoshiiku: Courtesans in a teahouse
Move your mouse over image or click to enlarge

Utagawa Yoshiiku (1833-1904)

Beautiful courtesans dressed in splendid kimonos present themselves in the wide open rooms of the upper floor of a teahouse in Edo/Tokyo. Remarkable the exaggerated representation of spatial perspective.

Title: 新島源梅ケ枝街 - 三河樓之圖 Shin-Shimabara Umegae-machi – Mikawa-rô no zu (The upper floor of the Mikawa house in the plum-alley of the New Shimabara quarter)

Signature: Ikkeisai Yoshiiku ga.  Seal: Kiri-Mon

Block cutter: Hori Utakichi (Ôta Utakichi)

Publisher: Yorozuya Magobei.  Date: 6/1869

Size: Ôban triptych, overall 36 x 72,7 cm (image size)

Very good impression, brilliant colours. Printed with gauffrage and burnishing. Three separate sheets, with old backing; margins in top and left extant. Excellent condition.

A rare triptych, showing one of the entertainment houses of the new Shin-Shimabara district in Tsukiji, Tokyo, which was established in 1869 by the Japanese government exclusively for the numerous foreigners now living in Tokyo. However, since demand for the pleasures offered there stayed far behind the expectations, the licensed quarter was closed after barely more than one year, leaving behind only a few prints documenting life in the New Shimabara.

Lit: Cybriwsky, Historical Dictionary of Toyko, 2011, p. 159. Siehe auch Seidensticker, Tokyo from Edo to Showa, 1867-1989, 2011, p. 54

€ 1.250,-

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