Komurasaki of the Kadotamaya with Attendants Hatsune and Utano

Komurasaki of the Kadotamaya with Attendants Hatsune and Utano, dated 1785 in the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of Chōbunsai Eishi's named-courtesan portraits from the same campaign of 1780s prints that introduced his refined version of the Yoshiwara to print collectors. Komurasaki was a celebrated oiran of the Kadotamaya house, and the inclusion of her young attendants Hatsune and Utano follows the convention of presenting the leading courtesan as the head of a small visual retinue. Eishi's Chobunsai school treatment shows in the deliberately tall, slim proportions of the figures and in the long, calm curves of the contour lines, both inherited and refined from the influence of Torii Kiyonaga and informed by Eishi's earlier training in the Kano studio of Eisen'in Michinobu. The composition arranges Komurasaki frontally as the principal axis, with her attendants oriented to support rather than compete with her presence, an arrangement consistent with the social hierarchy of the quarter and with Eishi's preference for measured grouping. Color is held in a restrained palette so that the patterned textiles of the courtesan's robes carry the visual weight, signaling rank and identity in a way that contemporary viewers would have read fluently. The Art Institute of Chicago records the 1785 date and the identification of all three figures by name, marking the impression as a documentary as well as artistic record of one of the major Yoshiwara houses at a key moment in Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga).