Geisha (Geigi), from the series “Three Amusements of Contemporary Beauties" ("Tosei bijin san’yu")

Geisha (Geigi), from Kitagawa Utamaro's c. 1795 series Three Amusements of Contemporary Beauties (Tosei bijin san'yu), held by the Art Institute of Chicago, presents the figure of the geisha as one of three feminine types into which fashionable urban womanhood could be sorted. Where the Yoshiwara courtesan represented sanctioned eroticism and the townswoman represented domestic respectability, the geisha occupied a distinct, professionalized middle ground: an accomplished performer of music and dance whose appeal lay in cultivated taste and conversational wit. Utamaro's design plays to this identity by giving his geisha understated, often dark-toned kimono, restrained hair ornaments, and an alert, composed expression. The half-length or three-quarter format permits the viewer to study the textile patterns at close range and the small adjustments of posture that distinguish a geisha from her counterparts elsewhere in the series. Within mature Edo bijin-ga, this sheet is exemplary of Utamaro's typological project, in which ukiyo-e becomes a kind of social atlas of feminine roles in late-eighteenth-century Edo.