Hour of the Hare [6am] (U no koku), from the series “The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara” ("Seiro juni toki tsuzuki")

Kitagawa Utamaro's Hour of the Hare (6 a.m.) (U no koku), from the series The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seiro juni toki tsuzuki), is held by the Art Institute of Chicago (artwork 23953). The Hour of the Hare corresponds roughly to 5 to 7 a.m., the moment of daybreak when the Yoshiwara's night world was visibly winding down: clients began their walk home, lanterns were extinguished, and the great houses transitioned from their nocturnal business to the quieter daytime routines. Utamaro's design assigns to this hour a Yoshiwara scene that registers daybreak through gesture and atmosphere, perhaps a parting, a moment of dressing, or an interior in which the night's activity is being closed down. Across the twelve sheets of Seiro juni toki tsuzuki the series traces the full diurnal cycle of the licensed quarter, making the Hour of the Hare a particularly meaningful station: the sheet of farewells and morning quiet that connects the night's pleasure economy to the public day of Edo. Stylistically the print belongs to Utamaro's mature bijin-ga, with refined keyblock drawing of face and hair, controlled nishiki-e color, and a half- or three-quarter-length composition that prioritizes the human figure over background. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding makes this Hour of the Hare available for study alongside the other sheets in the series. For collectors and researchers of Edo bijin-ga, the Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara remains one of Utamaro's most coherent and ambitious projects, and the Hour of the Hare sheet is among its quietly emotional moments, the threshold between night and day in the licensed quarter, drawn with Utamaro's characteristic restraint.