The Style of a Feudal Lord’s Household (Yashiki-fu), from the series Guide to Contemporary Styles (Tosei fuzoku tsu)

The Style of a Feudal Lord's Household (Yashiki-fu), from Kitagawa Utamaro's c. 1795 series Guide to Contemporary Styles (Tosei fuzoku tsu), held by the Art Institute of Chicago, turns his typological eye to a less commonly portrayed milieu: the female staff and dependents of a daimyo's Edo residence. Where most Edo bijin-ga concentrates on the Yoshiwara, the geisha quarters, or the townswoman household, the yashiki-fu sheet treats the somewhat stricter aesthetic of women attached to a samurai-class residence (sober colors, more reserved hairstyles, restrained obi patterning). Within the series, this type is set alongside other contemporary styles for comparison, encouraging the viewer to read difference in kimono cut, pattern density, and ornament. Utamaro's mature ukiyo-e line and his characteristically subtle modeling of faces give the women dignity rather than caricature, even as the series frame invites them to be classified. The print exemplifies how Edo bijin-ga of the mid-1790s expanded into a kind of social anthropology of feminine self-presentation across the city's class strata.