Postscript

This is the closing postscript page of Kitao Masanobu's great album New Yoshiwara Beauties Compared with Their Own Calligraphy (Yoshiwara keisei shin bijin awase jihitsu kagami) of 1783-1784. Where the double-page sheets between the preface and the postscript pair the leading courtesans of the Yoshiwara, this final page returns the album to text: it carries the publisher's colophon, often a brief literary closing by Masanobu himself (working here under his preferred kyōka-circle persona, identical with the writer Santō Kyōden), and the seals that establish the book as a luxury production. The typography and the seal cartouches are printed with the same care as the figural plates, and the empty paper around the text reads as the same controlled luxury that defines the rest of the album. Held by the MAK in Vienna as part of one of the most complete surviving sets, the postscript page is rarely discussed on its own — most attention focuses on the great courtesan portraits — but it is an integral piece of the album's literary framing and a small but precise example of the way Edo bijin-ga of the An'ei-Tenmei years presented itself as cultivated bookmaking rather than as mere single-sheet print.