Shirotae of the Okanaya, from the series "Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyo)"

This 1772 print by Isoda Koryusai depicts Shirotae of the Okanaya, a named courtesan of the Yoshiwara, in a sheet from Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyo). The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the impression under artwork 21373, with the named house, the named woman, and the series title intact in its catalogue. Hinagata Wakana, which ran across more than one hundred sheets during the 1770s, became the principal vehicle through which Koryusai industrialized the Edo bijin-ga format, repeating a single full-length compositional template across the named hierarchy of the licensed quarter so that each new design read as an installment in an ongoing project. Shirotae appears standing alone against a blank ground, her layered robes and heavy outer over-kimono filling the picture surface with patterned textiles, the broad obi tied prominently in front, and the elaborate arrangement of hairpins rising above a small-mouthed face. The pose is angled just enough to display the collars and the obi knot, in keeping with the documentary aim of the series, which used named portraits as a kind of seasonal fashion catalogue for the houses of the Yoshiwara. The print exemplifies the formula through which Koryusai dominated Edo bijin-ga in the 1770s while preserving the specificity of named woman and named house that distinguishes the Hinagata Wakana corpus.