Modern Beauty Practicing Jōruri Music (Tōsei jō jōruri)

Modern Beauty Practicing Joruri Music (Tosei jo joruri) is a Kitagawa Utamaro design at the Harvard Art Museums that situates an Edo bijin-ga subject within the everyday musical culture of the late eighteenth century. Joruri was a form of dramatic chanted narrative accompanied by the shamisen, central to the puppet theatre and widely performed as drawing-room music in the chonin households of Edo and Osaka. Here a fashionable young woman is shown practising the form, her book of texts and instrument identifying the moment as one of private study rather than public performance. Utamaro typically used such themes to celebrate the cultivated accomplishments of his subjects, presenting them as modern (tosei) participants in urban culture rather than as remote courtly ideals. The figure occupies most of the sheet, her elongated body conveying both poise and absorption. Patterned textiles, rendered in the careful colour separations of full-colour nishiki-e printing, define her social standing without overwhelming the central act of music-making. As part of Utamaro's broader engagement with the female accomplishments of Edo - reading, writing, music, the tea ceremony, fashionable dress - the print contributes to the ukiyo-e construction of the modern beauty as an actively cultured being. Held at Harvard, it joins a substantial group of related prints that allow scholars to trace how Utamaro and his publishers updated bijin-ga to reflect the artistic pursuits of their female audience.