The Waitress Ohisa of the Takashimaya

The Waitress Ohisa of the Takashimaya, designed by Katsukawa Shuncho around 1787 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts one of the most celebrated beauties of late eighteenth-century Edo. Takashima Ohisa worked at her family's teahouse near Ryogoku in Edo, and during the late 1780s her image circulated widely in ukiyo-e, particularly in works by Kitagawa Utamaro, who paired her in famous beauty trios. Katsukawa Shuncho's contribution to this celebrity phenomenon shows how broadly diffused the image of Ohisa had become: a single sheet by Shuncho, working in his mature Tenmei era bijin-ga manner, draws on the conventions of large head and large figure portraiture to convey both the woman's identity and her status as an icon of contemporary fashion. Although Shuncho had trained in the Katsukawa school under Shunsho, an atelier most associated with kabuki actor prints, his pictorial vocabulary translated naturally into the celebrity-driven bijin-ga that the era's print buyers craved. Line work is restrained, color carefully chosen, and kimono patterning calibrated to provide just enough information about Ohisa's wardrobe to satisfy customers attentive to specifics. The print also exemplifies the period's broader interest in attaching real personal identity to depicted figures, an evolution that would continue into the late ukiyo-e of the nineteenth century. Among Katsukawa Shuncho holdings of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Waitress Ohisa of the Takashimaya is a sharp illustration of how late eighteenth-century Edo print culture transformed local teahouse waitresses into widely recognized urban personalities.