Picture Book of Modern Figures of Fashion (Ehon imayō sugata) 絵本時世粧

Picture Book of Modern Figures of Fashion (Ehon imayō sugata), dated 1802, is an illustrated book that demonstrates Utagawa Toyokuni's full command of Edo ukiyo-e bijinga at the turn of the nineteenth century. Working within the woodblock-printed book format that flourished alongside single-sheet prints, Toyokuni surveyed the fashions, hairstyles, and accessories worn by women of contemporary Edo, presenting them in carefully composed scenes that doubled as a visual catalogue of urban taste. The Metropolitan Museum of Art preserves an impression of the work, which exemplifies the way printed books circulated style information across the city's social classes. Toyokuni had already established himself as the leading designer of yakusha-e through his celebrated Yakusha butai no sugata-e series of actor portraits, and Ehon imayō sugata applied the same observational sharpness to women, treating their dress as a kind of public performance. The double-page openings allow figures to occupy generous space, with detailed rendering of textile patterns, sash knots, and coiffures that reflect close study of the courtesan quarters and theatre audiences of the time. As head of the Utagawa school, Toyokuni used such books to model the bijin idiom for his many students, and Ehon imayō sugata remains an important document of late Kansei-era fashion as filtered through the most influential print designer of the period. Its survival in museum collections underscores how printed books, alongside single-sheet ukiyo-e, shaped the visual culture of Edo Japan.