The Courtesan Wakakusa of the Chojiya with Her Attendants Asano and Midori, from the series "Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyo)"

The Courtesan Wakakusa of the Chojiya with Her Attendants Asano and Midori belongs to Torii Kiyonaga's celebrated series Models for Fashion: New Designs as Fresh as Young Leaves (Hinagata wakana no hatsu moyo), held by the Art Institute of Chicago and dated 1783. The series, issued at the height of Kiyonaga's powers as fourth head of the Torii school, presented leading Yoshiwara courtesans alongside two kamuro attendants apiece, with each impression conceived as a record of the season's freshest robe designs—the "young leaves" of the title gesturing both to the women's youth and to the novelty of the textiles. Wakakusa of the Chojiya, one of the great houses of the Yoshiwara, is shown with the kamuro Asano and Midori in his characteristic tall, broad-shouldered Edo bijin-ga proportions. Kiyonaga's design pays special attention to costume: the courtesan's outer robe and obi serve as the focal pattern, while the kamuro's matching but subordinate garments demonstrate the brothel's coordinated aesthetic and rank hierarchy. The series operated simultaneously as portraiture of named courtesans, as advertisement for the Chojiya and its rivals, and as a fashion catalog for Edo's textile-buying public—a typical convergence of functions that defined the late-eighteenth-century bijin-ga market. Models for Fashion is regarded as a pinnacle of Kiyonaga's Yoshiwara series and stands at the center of any account of the Torii school's reach into refined polychrome printmaking during the 1780s. The Art Institute of Chicago impression is a primary reference for the design.