The Yoshiwara in Edo, from the series "Seven Courtesans (Nana yujo)"

The Yoshiwara in Edo, from the Katsushika Hokusai series Seven Courtesans (Nana yujo), is an Edo ukiyo-e print of 1802 held by the Art Institute of Chicago. The Yoshiwara was the licensed pleasure district on the northern edge of Edo, a walled quarter whose tea houses, parade streets and seasonal festivals supplied an enormous share of ukiyo-e imagery across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In a series organized around individual courtesans, Hokusai treats the district itself as a portrait subject: the architecture, lantern light and crowds become characters in their own right alongside the named woman of the title. This is a relatively early Hokusai design, made while he was still developing the firm contour line and confident planar composition that would later define his mature work. The figure groupings owe something to his training under Katsukawa Shunsho, but the open framing and interest in the surrounding setting already point toward the landscape sensibility that would distinguish his later series. As an Edo ukiyo-e print, it is valuable both as a document of how the Yoshiwara presented itself to the print-buying public and as evidence of Hokusai's developing approach to series structure, in which each sheet is both a stand-alone image and part of a larger thematic argument. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the sheet within its broad collection of late Edo ukiyo-e.