The Courtesan Segawa of Matsubaya Watching Her Attendants Play Cat's Cradle

The Courtesan Segawa of Matsubaya Watching Her Attendants Play Cat's Cradle, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1768, names one of the most famous oiran of the Matsubaya house in the Yoshiwara and stages her in a tableau of indoor leisure. Two young kamuro or shinzo attendants kneel before Segawa, their hands looped in the cord of ayatori (cat's cradle), while the courtesan herself watches the game with quiet attention. Koryusai uses the triangulation between Segawa and her attendants to choreograph a graceful interior composition: Segawa's body, in a heavy uchikake, dominates the upper portion of the picture, while the smaller figures below describe the playful cord shapes between them. The naming of Segawa anchors the print within the celebrity-portrait economy of Edo's pleasure quarters; it belongs to the same tradition of identifying oiran by name and house that Koryusai would elaborate in the Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo series of the late 1770s with publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi, where named courtesans posed in seasonal fashion plates. As an early Yoshiwara Edo bijin-ga, this composition shows the artist's command of hierarchical group portraiture, in which rank is communicated through scale, costume and pose. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 7560) is a chuban nishiki-e with carefully balanced reds, indigos and yellows, the cord of the cat's cradle traced in a single thread of line, and the textile patterns picked out across multiple cherry blocks. The print preserves Segawa as both a named celebrity and a focal point of refined indoor amusement within the Matsubaya. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/7560.