Going to the Kabuki Theater in the Hour of the Hare, from the series Customs at the Twelve Hours of the Day (Fūzoku Jūni-Ji)

Going to the Kabuki Theater in the Hour of the Hare, from the series 'Customs at the Twelve Hours of the Day' (Fūzoku Jūni-Ji, 風俗十二時), is an early-1800s color woodblock print by Kitagawa Hidemaro, signed 'Hidemaro ga,' held by the Cleveland Museum of Art (accession number 1943.44; sheet 34.4 × 23.1 cm). The series belongs to the long Edo tradition of horary mitate (parody) prints, in which each of the twelve animal hours of the classical Chinese-Japanese day is illustrated by a contemporary genre scene — a strategy that Utamaro and Eishi had used repeatedly in the 1790s and that Hidemaro continues here in the Bunka decade. The Hour of the Hare corresponded to roughly 5-7 a.m., the dawn period at which the day's pleasures were just beginning; the print shows elegant women setting out for the kabuki theaters of Saruwaka-chō in early-morning light. The bijin are rendered in Hidemaro's characteristic Utamaro-derived manner: elongated necks, sloping shoulders, narrow oval faces, and patterned kimono falling in long vertical folds, but with slightly fuller cheeks and a slightly heavier figural mass than in his teacher's late style. The print exemplifies the persistence of the Utamaro school's mitate strategies into the early nineteenth century and is one of the better-documented impressions of Hidemaro's work in a North American collection.