A Courtesan's Day: Hour by Hour

by Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Alfred H. Marks (Essay By), Harue M. Summersgill (Essay By)

Overview

A courtesan's day in the carefree atmosphere of the famous pleasure quarter the Yoshiwara in Edo (present-day Tokyo) was carefully planned to an hourly schedule. This sequence of 12 and later 24 hours proved a convenient device for Japanese print artists and their publishers when devising sets of prints showing favourite beauties of the day engaged in daily activities.
In this second volume of Hotei Publishing's Famous Japanese Prints Series, three sets centred on the theme of the hours of the clock in the pleasure quarters are discussed in detail:
• Kitagawa Utamaro's The Twelve Hours of the 'Green Houses' (Seirō jūnitoki, c. 1794)
• Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's Twenty-four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi (Shinryū nijūyoji, 1880-81)
• Toyohara Kunichika's Scenes of the Twenty-four Hours, A Prictorial Trope (Mitate chūya nijūyoji, 1890-91)
A contextual and visual analysis of these works by the authors provides the reader with an insight into the broader cultural and artistic milieu of the early and later nineteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9789074822596
Publisher:	Brill Academic Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	01/01/2004
Series:	Famous Japanese Prints Series , #2
Pages:	182
Product dimensions:	8.86(w) x 11.08(h) x 0.63(d)

About the Author

Alfred H. Marks is Professor Emeritus of American Literature at SUNY, New Paltz, New York, where he taught from 1963 to 1985.
Monika Hinkel recently finished completed her Ph.D. at the Department of Japanese Studies, Bonn University on the topic of the historical prints of Toyohara Kunichika, with a focus on the Western influences on his art.
Amy Reigle Newland has worked as a specialist editor and writer on Japanese woodblock prints for some fifteen years, with a particular interest in works of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Cecilia Segawa Seigle is Professor Emerita of Japanese Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, where she taught from 1984 to 1999.
Harue M. Summersgill is Professor Emerita of Japanese Language and Literature at Chaminade University, Honolulu, where she taught from 1976 to 1997. Her publications and translation work include ‘The Influence of William James and Henry Bergson on Natsume Sōseki’s Higan sugi made’ (Kyushu American Literature XXII, 1981) and Bonchi (by Yamasaki Toyoko; trans., 1982).