Courtesans

Japan's rich native culture was thrown back on its own resources when, from the early seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate closed the country off to the outside world for more than two hundred years. But in the rare painted figures of the Kan'ei era there is an animation and a degree of realism in the representation of the female body that may reflect Western influences and that tells of a highly creative phase in the culture of a country now stable and prosperous. Figures were soon to become more static.

The subjects of this screen are elite courtesans, and they are individualized both by their languorous body language and by their clothing. Their faces are only minimally decribed. One parades in her finery, waited on by an alert young attendant; while two others enjoy reading a scroll, perhaps a "morning after" letter from a lover. The splendidly described fabrics of the kosode, including the costly techniques, contributed to the aura surrounding the lives of these high-ranking courtesans.