The Tenth Month (Kannazuki): Wakamatsu and Wakatsuru of the Tawaraya, from the series "Twelve Patterns in the Northern Quarter (Hokkaku juni moyo)"

From Twelve Patterns in the Northern Quarter (Hokkaku juni moyo), Isoda Koryusai's print for the Tenth Month, Kannazuki, presents Wakamatsu and Wakatsuru of the Tawaraya, dated 1771 in the Art Institute of Chicago's record (artwork 89098). The series title locates the project within the Northern Quarter, the standard Edo-period euphemism for the Yoshiwara, and assigns one design to each of the twelve months, pairing seasonal reference with named courtesans from specific houses. For Kannazuki, the so-called godless month when deities were thought to gather in Izumo, Koryusai selects two women of the Tawaraya, balancing them within a single sheet that doubles the documentary force of the standard Edo bijin-ga portrait. The composition follows Koryusai's mature 1770s formula: a blank or near-blank ground, layered robes whose textile patterns occupy the bulk of the picture surface, broad obis tied in front, and tall arrangements of hairpins above small-mouthed faces. The series is one of several twelve-month projects through which Koryusai mapped the calendar onto the social hierarchy of the licensed quarter, a strategy that prefigures and overlaps with his long-running Hinagata Wakana, which by the later 1770s would systematize the named-courtesan format on an even larger scale. The Art Institute's catalogue confirms the series title, the month, the house, and both women's names.