Young Woman Hanging a Mosquito Net as Cat Plays at Her Feet

Young Woman Hanging a Mosquito Net as Cat Plays at Her Feet, designed by Isoda Koryusai in 1769, takes as its subject the kaya, the gauzy summer mosquito net that defined Edo bedrooms in warm weather. The woman, on tiptoe or with one arm raised, secures the net's loop to a fixture above her head, while a small cat plays at the hem of her kosode below. Koryusai uses the diagonal of the net's pulled cord and the rising arm to create the kind of taut, elongated figure that distinguishes his early Edo bijin-ga: the body lengthened, the obi twisted across the back, the bare nape and ankles exposed in concession to the heat. The combination of mosquito net, summer kimono and feline familiar belongs to a wide vocabulary of seasonal interior scenes that the floating world had developed in the 1760s, and Koryusai treats it with characteristic intimacy. The print sits between Suzuki Harunobu's earlier domestic vignettes and the more confident genre images that Koryusai would continue to develop alongside the celebrity courtesan portraits of the Hinagata Wakana no Hatsumoyo series of the late 1770s. The Art Institute of Chicago impression (object 23143) is a chuban nishiki-e with delicate green and yellow washes for the net, indigo and rose patterning on the robe, and the cat outlined in fine keyblock work. The interplay of the woman's stretched body and the cat's small leaping form provides the composition with both narrative incident and graphic balance, demonstrating Koryusai's keen eye for the small accidents of domestic Edo life. Source: Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artworks/23143.