Utagawa Kunisada (歌川国貞) / Toyokuni III (三代豊国) (artist 1786 – 01/12/1865)
"Hiding Eyebrows" (Mayu kakushi - 眉かくし) from the series Mirrors of the Modern Boudoir (Imafū keshō-kagami - 今風化粧鏡)
1823
9.75 in x 14.75 in (Overall dimensions) Color woodblock print
Signed: Gototei Kunisada ga
五渡亭国貞画
Publisher: Azumaya Daisuke
(Marks 025 - seal 06-001)
Censor's seal: kiwame
Beaux-arts de Paris
Hokkaido Museum of Art This very rare print is from a set of ten. Citing a different print from this series Sebastian Izzard wrote in Utagawa Kunisada: His World Revisited on page 84: "Married women in Edo Japan shaved their eyebrows and blackened their teeth." While this woman's teeth are already blackened, perhaps she is covering her eyebrows to imagine herself as a married woman.
Later Izzard noted that one of the prints in this set displays "...a packet of Bien Senjokō (Beautiful fairly maiden fragrance), a popular cosmetic whose brand name was based on the poetry name (haimyō) Rokō, of the Kabuki actor Segawa Kikunojō V (1802-32), one of Edo's leading contemporary onnagata, or players of female roles. It was manufactured by Sakemoto, a man who often used beauty and landscape prints to promote his products. Indeed, selling this kind of advertising was a common way for publishers, such as Azumaya to defray the expenses of producing prints." The packet does not appear in this particular example.
"The set shows women from various walks of life intimately engaged in preparing themselves for he day. Here, as noted above, a housewife shaves her eyebrows. Others in the set depict women plucking their eyebrows, checking their hairpins, examining their teeth, adjusting their hair, and so on. In style, the compositions hark back to Utamaro, but by boldly using the black lacquer cases of the hand mirrors to frame his portraits, Kunisada gives the designs a twist that is all his own."
In her hair is a kanzashi or hairpin decorated with a lively carp.
****
Enlarge this print and look closely at the woman's reddish-brown robe. The lighter colored design pattern is made up of a horde of hares. Her hairpin has a carved fish on it. The reticulated comb in her hair is a pierced floral pattern.
That same motif of the squat hare facing the viewer straight on appears at least two other times in Lyon Collection. Both of the other examples are by Koryūsai and date from approximately fifty years earlier. They show up on the as a single hare on the back of an outfit worn by a young boy: #s 1320 and 1352.
****
Illustrated
1) in color, 1/4 page, inUtagawa Kunisada: Bijin-ga wo Chushin ni (歌川国貞 : 美人画を中心に - Utagawa Kunisada: Focusing on Pictures of Beautiful Women), Seikadō Bunko Library, 1996, p. 52, #72. The Seikadō Bunko Art Museum (静嘉堂文庫) owns a copy of this print along with the others in its set.
2) in color in 原色浮世絵大百科事典 (Genshoku Ukiyoe Daihyakka Jiten), vol. 5, p. 104, #425.
****
There is another copy of this print in the Canterbury Museum, Christ Church, New Zealand.
beautiful women (bijin-ga - 美人画) (genre)
Azumaya Daisuke (東屋大助) (publisher)