The Floating World
Takashima Ohisa
高島おひさ · Takashima Ohisa
Kitagawa Utamaro · c. 1793
What it is
Ohisa of the Takashimaya — the cracker-shop owner’s daughter whose face drew customers from across the city — in half-length, composed and self-possessed.
Why it matters
She was one of the celebrated “three beauties of the Kansei era”: a shop girl made nationally famous by prints, celebrity manufactured in woodblock a century and a half before the photograph.
What to notice
The crest on her kimono is the shop’s as much as hers — the portrait doubles as the Takashimaya’s advertisement, and Edo read it exactly that way.
To be seen once in Edo was to be seen ten thousand times.
The record
- Artist
- Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川歌麿 (1753–1806)
- Date
- c. 1793
- Medium
- woodblock print; ink and color on paper
- Source
- The Art Institute of Chicago · 1925.3030
Impression note. The safflower pinks of lips and under-robe are fugitive and pale with exposure; fine impressions also keep the crisp single-strand hairlines at the temples before the keyblock began to wear. Impression variance is real — printings differ in wiping and fading — and choosing the finest openly held impression is the curatorial act.
Public domain; faithfully reproduced.
Bring it home
Printed to order on EMA matte art paper, 200gsm.
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