Woman Seamstress with Landscape Fan, from the series Toto Meisho Kurabe

This color woodblock print ([nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e)), held by the Art Institute of Chicago (accession number 1971.845a, gift of Patricia Hyland), depicts a woman seamstress standing alone on the page with a landscape-decorated fan opened across the upper register. It belongs to the series "Tōto Meisho Kurabe" (Comparison of Famous Places in the Eastern Capital), in which beautiful women (bijin) are paired with views of celebrated Edo landmarks rendered as designs on fans, screens, or other decorative objects. The print is identified in the Art Institute's catalogue as a unique double impression preserving two states of the same design, allowing scholars to study the progressive stages of the multi-block colour-printing process. The dating in the museum record (1841-1899) reflects the broad span of Utagawa Yoshifuji's career rather than a known publication date, though the visual style is consistent with his mid-career bijinga of the 1860s and 1870s. The combination of a bijin figure with a topographical motif belongs to the long-established mitate idiom of late-Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), in which famous places are quietly evoked through a decorative element rather than depicted directly. The print is held in the Art Institute of Chicago's substantial collection of Japanese woodblock prints.