Picture of the First Visit to the Pleasure Quarters

Picture of the First Visit to the Pleasure Quarters is a color woodblock print by Kitagawa Tsukimaro, dating to the early decades of the nineteenth century. The composition depicts the classic Yoshiwara genre theme of the first visit (hatsu-mise or shoroku) — a young man, often a youth on the cusp of adulthood, making his initial entrance into the licensed quarter under the guidance of an experienced companion or guide. The subject was a staple of Edo popular culture, treated in fiction, theatre, and ukiyo-e from at least the early eighteenth century onward, and it carried strong overtones of comedy, parody, and social initiation. Tsukimaro's treatment of the theme places it within his broader interest in narrative bijin-ga: scenes in which beauties appear not as solitary portrait subjects but as participants in an unfolding social moment. The figures are rendered in his characteristic elongated manner, the composition organized to emphasize the contrasting postures of the nervous newcomer and his more experienced surroundings. The print is held by the Cleveland Museum of Art, bequeathed in 1940 by James Parmelee.