Two Courtesans Watching an Attendant Play with a Rat

Two Courtesans Watching an Attendant Play with a Rat is a 1772 woodblock print by Isoda Koryusai that brings the Edo bijin-ga master's eye for layered interior life into a moment of vivid domestic comedy. The print depicts a pair of Yoshiwara courtesans, identified by their high-piled hairstyles and luxurious layered kimono, looking on as a kamuro, the young attendant in training in the licensed quarter, engages a rat in play. The scene draws on a small Edo subgenre in which courtesans were depicted watching subordinates with animals, both for the visual interest of multiple figures and as a vehicle for showing different stages of life within the same household. The rat carries its own quiet symbolism: the first creature in the Chinese zodiac, an attribute of the god Daikokuten, and an Edo emblem of cleverness and prosperity. Koryusai builds the composition around the contrast between the controlled poses of the seated courtesans and the lively diagonal of the kamuro stooped over the animal, letting the textile patterns of all three figures provide rhythmic variety across the surface. His draftsmanship has a steadied confidence here, prefiguring the close attention to costume and ranking that would dominate his celebrated Yoshiwara fashion series Hinagata Wakana no Hatsu Moyo later in the decade. The Art Institute of Chicago houses this impression, where it documents the more narrative side of Koryusai's early-1770s engagement with Yoshiwara subject matter.