Issued around 1794 and held by the Harvard Art Museums, the Hour of the Tiger (Tora no koku) belongs to The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seirō jūni toki tsuzuki), one of Kitagawa Utamaro's most celebrated [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) series. Each design pairs a courtesan or attendant with one of the twelve double-hours of the traditional Japanese day, framing the entire daily rhythm of the licensed quarter as a sequence of female portraits. The Hour of the Tiger corresponds to roughly four in the morning, the chilly moment when the evening's clients have departed and the quarter is finally winding down. Utamaro renders this hush in the body language of his figures: a sleeve drawn close against the cold, a slight droop of the head, the careful, almost sleepwalking adjustment of disheveled hair. The composition is built on the half-length, near-frame okubi-e format he made his signature, allowing the viewer to read every nuance of the courtesan's expression. The series cartouche shaped like a small clock disk anchors the design and would have helped Edo buyers collect and arrange the set as a calendar of beauty. As an entry in his Edo bijin-ga catalogue, this Hour of the Tiger sheet shows how Utamaro fused commercial [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) with a remarkable psychological economy, transforming a simple time marker into a portrait of fatigue, intimacy, and the quiet professional rhythms behind the Yoshiwara's public glamour.
![A Low Class Prostitute (Gun [teppo]), from the series “Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter" ("Hokkoku goshiki-zumi") by Kitagawa Utamaro](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/ed82be98-8a83-4163-ccc4-e2f7210cce55/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
c. 1794/95
Color woodblock print; oban
c. 1793
color woodblock print
Woodblock print
Woodblock print
Woodblock print
![Hour of the Rat [12pm] (Ne no koku), from the series "The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seiro juni toki tsuzuki)" by Kitagawa Utamaro](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/df3242c0-3535-b828-b556-56ca889435cd/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; oban
![Hour of the Ox [2am] (Ushi no koku), from the series "The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seiro juni toki tsuzuki)" by Kitagawa Utamaro](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/383194e4-1eb2-0166-ee78-500d2ef5d875/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; oban
![Hour of the Hare [6am] (U no koku), from the series “The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara” ("Seiro juni toki tsuzuki") by Kitagawa Utamaro](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/a9a8d8c0-e642-2335-2538-b61cdd915c94/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
c. 1794
Color woodblock print; oban
Hour of the Tiger [4am] (Tora no koku), from the series The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seirō jūni toki tsuzuki) was created by Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿) in c. 1794 (Kansei 6).
Yes — Hour of the Tiger [4am] (Tora no koku), from the series The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seirō jūni toki tsuzuki) is part of the Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara series by Kitagawa Utamaro.
Hour of the Tiger [4am] (Tora no koku), from the series The Twelve Hours in Yoshiwara (Seirō jūni toki tsuzuki) depicts yoshiwara.