Courtesan and Her Maid

This Metropolitan Museum of Art print, accessioned with a wide Edo-period date range, shows a courtesan and her young maid (kamuro) in the format and idiom that became Eishō's signature. The taller, named figure stands in characteristic oiran dress — the obi tied in front, the layered kimono falling in long vertical folds — while the smaller attendant occupies the lower half of the design, looking up toward her mistress. The pairing of oiran and kamuro was one of the defining visual units of the Yoshiwara: top-ranked courtesans were always accompanied by two young attendants in public, and prints of the pair together codified that hierarchy for the print-buying audience. Eishō's handling of the relationship is gentle rather than rigid, the kamuro's upturned face giving the design an interior emotional register that more theatrical processions lack.