Shin Yoshiwara

Utagawa Yoshitora is one of the most representative masters of the Ukiyo-e school of popular engraving of the second half of the 19th century. He was a disciple of Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861). Yoshitora developed his career between the 1850s and 1880s in the city of Edo, which became known as Tôkyô in 1868, when Emperor Mutsuhito moved the capital from Kyôto, ushering in the Meiji era (1868-1912) in which Japan was greatly influenced by Western culture. Yoshitora’s best known production is precisely the one that describes the arrival of Westerners, their fashions and customs in Japan. About thirty kilometers from the capital was the port of Yokohama, the main gateway for Europeans and North Americans to Japan. The prints depicting this “exotic” world of Westerners were thus called Yokohama-e.However, Yoshitora’s production was not limited to the Yokohama-e, for in keeping with the most popular themes of Japanese engraving, he also depicted the beautiful women or bijin of his time and, specifically, the geisha and courtesans who worked in the “green houses” or “tea houses” of the Shin Yoshiwara district, in the Asakusa district, where prostitution had been regulated in Edo since 1657. This is shown in this print engraved in 1859, which corresponds to the left leaf of a triptych whose protagonists are the high-ranking courtesans or oiran of one of the establishments in the pleasure district of the capital. The courtesans, characterized by their showy and expensive kimonos and their elaborate hairstyles with kanzashi hairpins, show their charms to the spectators on the railings of the Koushi- ro establishment. / Bibliography: ALMAZÁN TOMÁS, D.: “Shin Yoshiwara. 1859. S. XIX. Japan”, in LÓPEZ GUZMÁN, R.; RUIZ GUTIÉRREZ, A.; SORROCHE CUERVA, M.A. (Scientific Coord.): Oriente en Granada (Exhibition Catalogue). Granada, 2008, pp.: 70-71.