Koto — 琴

"Koto" (琴, 1897) depicts a woman playing the koto — the long horizontal zither that was the most prestigious instrument of traditional Japanese feminine musical accomplishment. The koto's playing position (performer seated at floor level, the instrument extending horizontally before her) was itself a compositional subject: the characteristic posture, the hand positions required for the specific plucking techniques, the relationship between performer and instrument. The koto subject connected Shuntei's genre work to the long tradition of bijin-ga images associating feminine beauty with musical cultivation.