Yagenbori, from the series "Fashionable Sands of Edo (Fuzoku Edo sunago)"

Held by the Art Institute of Chicago, this chuban color woodblock print belongs to Katsukawa Shuncho's series Fashionable Sands of Edo (Fuzoku Edo sunago), in which each print pairs a specific Edo neighborhood with a vignette of fashionable female life there. Yagenbori, named for the medicinal-mortar shape of a small canal in the Nihonbashi district, was a busy area of artisanal workshops, druggists, and townhouses. The series title plays on the word sunago (grains of sand), suggesting a compendium of small but characteristic moments scattered across Edo's neighborhoods, an early instance of the topographically organized genre that would culminate in the Hiroshige famous-place series of the next century. Shuncho's treatment, in keeping with his Tenmei-era approach, foregrounds the women whose dress, gesture, and posture identify the neighborhood, treating the human figure as the most reliable carrier of urban identity.