The Song Book Masumiyoshu — 十寸見要集

The Song Book Masumiyoshu (Masumi-yoshu) is a sheet from Keisai Eisen's series Collection of Books of Edo Music (Edo no ongaku no sho atsumare or similar). The series belongs to the broader Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) habit of using books, songs and named compositions as the organising armature for sets of [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) - a beauty for each printed book in a popular collection. The Masumi-yoshu was one of the standard anthologies of Edo music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, drawing on the jiuta and shamisen song tradition, and Eisen's print pairs its title with a fashionable woman whose costume, accessories and pose carry the mood of the music. The figure is built with the mannerisms that anchor Eisen's mature work: elongated neck, small head, and the heavily drawn outer kimono whose pattern dominates the design. The print is preserved in the ukiyo-e.org archive (Eisen Keisai, Collection of Books of Edo Music, The Song Book Masumiyoshu). As with the rest of the series, the sheet depends on a knowledgeable viewer who could match the named song book to the depicted beauty - a kind of literacy that ukiyo-e publishers in the 1830s could still assume in a substantial portion of their Edo audience.