The Princess Style (Ohimesama-fu)

Held by the Art Institute of Chicago, this hand-colored urushi-e of around 1735 is titled The Princess Style (Ohimesama-fu), evidence of Toshinobu's interest in identifying fashionable types within Edo society. The ohimesama-fu, or princess style, referred to a particular manner of dress and comportment associated with young women of high status, characterized by elaborate kimono, formal sash arrangements, and the long, trailing hair styles favored at court and emulated by Edo's most refined courtesans. Toshinobu's hosoban shows a single standing figure in this style, her costume elaborated through hand-applied pigment and the lacquered urushi blacks that defined his mature manner. The print belongs to a broader Edo print tradition of style books and fashion catalogues, which categorized contemporary women by their dress and presentation. The Art Institute's impression is a fine example of how Toshinobu combined the visual language of yakusha-e with the typological interest in feminine fashion that animated so much eighteenth-century print culture. The print belongs to the broader hand-colored bijin-ga tradition that Toshinobu helped advance within the Okumura school, a tradition in which the linear elegance, slender proportions, and lacquered urushi blacks of the early eighteenth century laid the visual groundwork for the polychrome nishiki-e bijin-ga that would emerge a generation later in the hands of Harunobu and his successors.