Courtesan of the Chikiriya in Furuichi, Ise Province, from the series "Comparison of Proverbs and Customs (Tatoegusa fuzoku awase)"

This Art Institute of Chicago oban, dated c. 1814, is drawn from the series "Comparison of Proverbs and Customs (Tatoegusa fuzoku awase)," in which famous courtesans of provincial pleasure quarters are paired with classical proverbs. The sitter here is a courtesan of the Chikiriya — one of the prominent houses in the Furuichi pleasure district outside the Ise Grand Shrine. Furuichi catered to pilgrims visiting Ise and was famous, alongside Yoshiwara and Shimabara, as one of the three great pleasure quarters of Japan. Eizan's series invites the viewer to read each portrait against the proverb assigned to it, a literary game of the kind that animated late-Edo print culture. The portrait itself shows characteristic Kikukawa-school traits — elongated face, narrow shoulders, robes with finely modulated patterning — and stands as evidence of Eizan's reach beyond Edo subjects into the broader Tokaido and pilgrimage geography.