Hour of the Ox [2am] (Ushi no koku), from the series "The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seiro juni toki tsuzuki)"

Kitagawa Utamaro's Hour of the Ox (2 a.m.) (Ushi no koku), from the series The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seiro juni toki tsuzuki), is held by the Art Institute of Chicago (artwork 23947). The series is one of the masterpieces of Utamaro's Yoshiwara project: each of the twelve sheets is assigned to one of the traditional Japanese double-hours (toki), named after the twelve zodiac animals, and depicts a corresponding moment in the daily rhythm of the licensed quarter. The Hour of the Ox falls in the deep middle of the night, roughly 1 to 3 a.m., a time when the public face of the Yoshiwara is mostly hidden, the household routines of the great houses are at their most private, and named courtesans or their attendants are caught in quiet, after-hours moments. Utamaro's design exploits this temporal specificity to construct a Yoshiwara scene that is psychologically loaded rather than purely decorative: a quiet exchange, a discreet errand, or a solitary figure becomes legible as a Hour of the Ox event in a way that links the visual image to the time-keeping system of Edo. Stylistically the print is a multi-figure or single-figure half-length composition in Utamaro's mature manner, with careful drawing of the face, hair, and clothing, and a controlled nishiki-e palette appropriate to a luxury Edo print. The Art Institute of Chicago's holding is a key reference for the Seiro juni toki tsuzuki, perhaps Utamaro's most cohesive single statement of the inner life of the Yoshiwara. For collectors and students of Edo bijin-ga and ukiyo-e, the Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara is one of the great Utamaro series, and the Hour of the Ox sheet is among its most evocative individual images.