Jijo Hokun Onna Ima-gawa (Treasured Lessons of Young Girls)

Designed by Torii Kiyonaga, "Jijo Hokun Onna Ima-gawa (Treasured Lessons of Young Girls)" derives from one of the popular conduct books of Edo Japan, in which model letters and exhortations defined ideal behavior for girls and young women. Kiyonaga's print transposes the textual world of the conduct manual into Edo bijin-ga, depicting genteel female figures in a domestic interior whose activity gestures back to the didactic content of the source book. As head of the Torii school, Kiyonaga frequently mediated between literary or moral material and the visual conventions of the floating world, lending the conduct book's tone of seriousness to figures whose costume and bearing also broadcast the latest fashions. The composition follows his familiar template: tall, columnar women, gentle oval faces, and a shallow architectural space defined by sliding screens, all rendered with restrained line and broad expanses of patterned cloth. The British Museum sheet documented on ukiyo-e.org preserves this design, where it sits among the artist's didactic-themed bijin-ga that lent prestige to women's instructional literature. By visualizing the lessons of the conduct manual through stylish contemporary figures, Kiyonaga and his publisher addressed two markets at once: families who saw the prints as illustrations to morally serious texts, and collectors who valued them as fashionable bijin-ga from the head of the Torii school in his pictorial prime.