Hour of the Monkey [4pm] (Saru no koku), from the series “The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara” ("Seiro juni toki tsuzuki")

Dated about 1789 and in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hour of the Monkey (Saru no koku) belongs to Kitagawa Utamaro's Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seirō jūni toki tsuzuki), a series that anatomizes the daily life of the licensed quarter by allocating each of the traditional twelve double-hours to a separate scene of beauty. The Hour of the Monkey, corresponding to roughly four in the afternoon, captures a transitional moment in the quarter: too late for the courtesans' rituals of preparation for the early evening, too early for the peak hours of patronage, a moment of relative quiet often spent on letters, music, conversation, or grooming. Utamaro uses this contemplative interval to construct a tightly framed composition that places the women at the visual center, with a few choice objects (a tobacco tray, a fan, perhaps a stringed instrument) anchoring the moment in everyday practice. His drawing of the figures shows the early signs of the okubi-e style that would soon dominate his Edo bijin-ga: elongated necks, refined oval faces, and careful gradations of expression. The series cartouche, often shaped like a clock face or a paired animal sign, helped collectors assemble the full twelve sheets, and it also tied the print into the broader visual culture of time-keeping that fascinated late-Edo viewers. As a comparatively early sheet from the series, the Art Institute's impression documents Utamaro's emerging ukiyo-e vocabulary and his characteristically humane vision of the Yoshiwara's daily rhythms.