Art of Ukiyoe

Yoshiwara Nightime Blues

When Prussian blue arrived in Edo-era Japan, it was the hottest new thing in Ukiyo-e world. Rich and stubborn, it didn’t fade like earlier dyes, and it gave birth to a new style of print, the aizuri-e, or “blueprint.” Woodblock artists would create entire designs using this one color, creating values by varying the levels of saturation and the bokashi. Hokusai’s “36 Views of Mount Fuji” includes several designs that rely so much on Prussian blue that they nearly qualify as aizuri-e themselves.

This Hiroshige II view of Yoshiwara, Edo’s fabled pleasure district, dates from 1862. It takes the classic aizuri-e and adds bold reds – reds as striking as the inner skirts of the more tawdry sex workers in this nocturnal land of sensual amusements. Yoshiwara was heavily regulated by the government; this print shows the entrance. Heavy wooden gates were locked during the day. Yoshiwara was a nighttime world only.  

But what a world it was, and to my mind this print captures it like few others. Geishas in red glide by regally, led by lantern-carrying attendants, trailed by young maikos, or geishas-in-training.

Revelers arrive for a night of carnal fun; some are already enjoying themselves on second-floor balconies. The perspective seems to go on and on forever, just like the hopes of customers with cash in the sleeves of their kimonos when the night has just begun and anything could still happen.

Sharon