Women Visiting the Bird and Flower Teahouse (Kachojaya)
- Date:
- c. 1792/93
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; center sheet of oban triptych
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
Utagawa Toyokuni I's "Women Visiting the Bird and Flower Teahouse (Kachōjaya)" depicts a celebrated suburban Edo teahouse, the Kachōjaya — literally Bird-and-Flower Teahouse — that drew fashionable visitors to its garden seasons. The Art Institute of Chicago holds the print as part of its substantial Toyokuni collection. Three or more women, drawn with Toyokuni's careful sense of grouping, move through the teahouse's environs in robes whose patterns serve as both fashion document and pictorial structure. Although Utagawa Toyokuni earned his living and his reputation through kabuki actor prints — the [yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e) that became the trademark of the Utagawa school within Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) — his bijin scenes set in named Edo establishments are no less important. They function as soft advertising for the city's leisure economy, naming the place and rendering the experience with the kind of stylized clarity that recognized the patron and the patronized as equals in a shared social performance. The Kachōjaya was famous enough that other artists, before and after Toyokuni, designed their own versions; Toyokuni's contribution stands apart for the way his line accommodates both portrait and atmosphere. The Art Institute of Chicago's catalogue documents the print without speculating beyond the inscriptions, allowing the image to remain the primary evidence. For collectors interested in how Edo ukiyo-e mapped the city's pleasures, this Kachōjaya design is a strong reference point and a key Toyokuni example.
early 1830s
Color woodblock print; shikishiban, surimono
1796
Woodblock print (nishiki-e), ink and color on paper
1769–1825
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Women Visiting the Bird and Flower Teahouse (Kachojaya) was created by Utagawa Toyokuni I (歌川豊国) in c. 1792/93.
Women Visiting the Bird and Flower Teahouse (Kachojaya) depicts birds & flowers.
