Hour of the Tiger [4 am], Courtesan (Tora no koku, keisei), from the series

Explicitly identified in the title as depicting a keisei — a courtesan — during the Hour of the Tiger, approximately 4:00 in the morning, this print captures the final, pre-dawn hour of a working night in the Yoshiwara. At this hour, patrons would be departing and courtesans completing the last obligations of the night before sleeping. The designation keisei, a classical term for courtesan meaning literally 'city-toppler,' carries literary connotations reaching back to Chinese poetry, lending the image a cultural register beyond simple genre documentation. The pre-dawn hour likely informs the composition's mood: fatigue, quiet, perhaps the melancholy that Utamaro associated with the professional life of Yoshiwara women in his more psychologically probing series.