Welcoming Guests into a Room

A print depicting the welcoming of guests into a room — a scene of Japanese domestic hospitality in which the formal protocols of receiving visitors were performed with the precision and grace that traditional etiquette required. The reception of guests was a highly codified social practice in Japanese culture, with specific forms of greeting, specific postures, specific language, and specific arrangements of the room that signaled both respect and social standing. Chikanobu's documentation of this social ritual captures the visual formalism that structured even everyday domestic encounters.