The Sixth Scene from Scenes of the Pleasure Quarter at Yoshiwara in Edo

The Sixth Scene from Scenes of the Pleasure Quarter at Yoshiwara in Edo is one leaf of a multi-sheet sequence by Hishikawa Moronobu, dated 1667 by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The series follows a visitor's progress through the Yoshiwara from arrival at the great gate to the final, intimate encounters inside an upper-tier brothel. By the sixth scene, the action has moved indoors. A senior courtesan receives her client in a reception room of a high-ranking establishment, surrounded by attendants—a kamuro pouring saké, a shinzō folding a robe, an older yarite supervising the arrangements from a corner. Moronobu organizes the space along a single sweep of tatami; the sliding doors at the back of the room are pushed aside to reveal further interior depth, and a folding screen partially shields the principal figures from the viewer's gaze. His line work is at its most confident here. The courtesan's robe falls in long, unbroken curves; her hair is rendered as a single mass of black ink; and her face, like all the figures', is drawn with a few decisive strokes that nonetheless register tilt, glance, and mood. As the ukiyo-e founder, Hishikawa Moronobu used this series to fix in printed form the visual language of the Yoshiwara that later artists would inherit. Within the broader history of early Edo ukiyo-e, the sequence remains one of the most important descriptions of the licensed quarter's mature ritual, and the Met's preservation of the sixth scene gives modern viewers a direct window into Edo's most famous public secret.