Kasugano and Hanamatsu of the Tamaya, from the series Brocade of Yoshiwara Figures (Yoshiwara sugata no nishiki)

Kasugano and Hanamatsu of the Tamaya are paired here in one of the double bijin compositions from Kitao Masanobu's series Brocade of Yoshiwara Figures (Yoshiwara sugata no nishiki), a project that runs parallel to his great calligraphy-album of 1783-1784 and applies much the same logic to the standard ōban sheet. The Tamaya was one of the prominent Yoshiwara houses, and Masanobu — known to his Edo readers equally as the writer Santō Kyōden — presents its two named stars in the calm, frontal, slightly mannered way he had developed for his earlier double portraits. Each woman is identified by name, the robes are drawn with crisp pattern lines printed against muted indigo and pink grounds, and the composition is organized so that the two figures stand close enough that their kimono patterns appear to be drawn into a single decorative field — the 'brocade' of the series title. The line is firm but unaccented, the faces oval and individualized within the late-Kitao school's restrained vocabulary, and the empty paper around the women reads as the polite air of the parlor rather than as background. Held by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the sheet is a representative example of late-eighteenth-century Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) at the level of named courtesan portraiture.