The Hours of Worldly Beauties (Fûzoku bijin dokei): The Hour of the Horse (Noon) - Shrine Maiden (Uma no koku - miko)

Kitagawa Utamaro designed this ukiyo-e portrait of a shrine maiden, or miko, as the Hour of the Horse from the series The Hours of Worldly Beauties (Fuzoku bijin dokei). The series translates the traditional twelve-hour clock, in which each two-hour segment is named for a zodiac animal, into a sequence of female types, pairing noon with the figure of a young woman whose ritual role at a Shinto shrine sets her apart from the courtesans for which Utamaro is most famous. The miko is depicted with the calm composure suited to her duties: clean linear hair, restrained ornament, and a white over-robe that contrasts sharply with the patterned kimono of secular beauties. By placing her at the brightest, most public hour of the day, Utamaro emphasizes the visibility and decorum of religious work, while still flattering the genre conventions of Edo bijin-ga in his treatment of face and gesture. The Hours of Worldly Beauties allowed townspeople to imagine the city as a procession of female occupations, each tied to a particular slice of the daily round. This impression is documented through ukiyo-e.org (image aic 79607_350667), where it joins a digital corpus of Utamaro prints used by scholars and collectors to compare states, palettes, and condition across institutions.