Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter

Kitagawa Utamaro's "Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter" (Hokkoku goshiki-zumi) is one of the artist's most admired bijin-ga cycles and a defining statement of his late okubi-e production. The series was published by Tsuruya Kiemon, generally dated to around 1794-1795, and uses the conceit of goshiki-zumi, the five graded shades of ink employed in calligraphic and painterly practice, to organize a roster of five Yoshiwara figures across the social hierarchy of the licensed quarter. The Northern Quarter (Hokkoku) was a common literary epithet for the Yoshiwara, situated to the north of the city, and the series accordingly presents a comparative typology of its female residents, ranked across the five gradations of ink from the deepest to the lightest tones. The five categories typically run from the high-ranking oiran and her attending kamuro through the geisha and the lower-ranking entertainers, and the series can be read as a careful sociological survey of the quarter's hierarchy of women. The sheets are oban tate-e and depict each figure at half-length against a plain or lightly toned ground in the okubi-e mode, with the cartouche identifying the rank or category. Each face is drawn with subtle variations of contour, gaze, and lip placement that convey the distinct psychological register of the respective rank. The series is held in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Chiba City Museum of Art, where it consistently figures among the supreme statements of Utamaro's mid-1790s bijin-ga production.

The Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter series contains 2 prints, created by Kitagawa Utamaro.

The Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter series was created by Kitagawa Utamaro (喜多川歌麿).

We currently have 1 of 2 known prints from the Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.