Folding Fan Seller, Round Fan Seller, and Barley Pounder (Ogi-uri, uchiwa-uri, mugi-tsuki), from the series "Female Geisha Section of the Yoshiwara Niwaka Festival (Seiro niwaka onna geisha no bu)"

Folding Fan Seller, Round Fan Seller, and Barley Pounder (Ōgi-uri, uchiwa-uri, mugi-tsuki), from the series Female Geisha Section of the Yoshiwara Niwaka Festival (Seirō niwaka onna geisha no bu), is a color woodblock print of about 1793 by Kitagawa Utamaro in the Art Institute of Chicago. The niwaka were impromptu summer festivals held in the Yoshiwara in which courtesans, geisha, and apprentice performers staged comic skits and parades in the costumes of street vendors and laborers. In this sheet, three figures appear in the guises of a folding-fan seller, a round-fan seller, and a barley pounder, each holding the appropriate prop and posed in playful imitation of the trades. Utamaro turns the festival's role-playing into a study in costume and pose, his ukiyo-e line carefully describing the patterned kimono, the rolled sleeves, and the distinctive headgear of each character. The trio also gives him a chance to vary body types and gestures across a single composition, with the labor of pounding barley contrasted with the more measured movements of the fan sellers. By embedding the Yoshiwara's most celebrated women in the costumes of itinerant workers, the niwaka format made a witty social commentary, briefly inverting the world of leisure and labor; Utamaro's Edo bijin-ga preserves both the humor and the visual richness of the event. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression is a strong example of how Kitagawa Utamaro chronicled the festivals and performances of the pleasure quarter as well as its private encounters.