Twenty-Four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi

"Twenty-Four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi" (Shinbashi Yanagibashi nijuyoji) is Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's bijin-ga cycle of the early 1880s commemorating the daily life of the geisha quarters of Shinbashi and Yanagibashi, the two leading hanamachi of Meiji-era Tokyo. Shinbashi had risen to prominence after the opening of Yokohama and the relocation of the political elite to the new capital, while Yanagibashi by the Sumida River retained an older Edo identity; together they constituted the leading geisha districts of the post-Restoration period and were the natural successors, in popular culture, to the Yoshiwara of the late Edo era. The series was published in 1880 by Tsunashima Kamekichi in oban tate-e format and follows the conceit suggested by its title: each sheet is identified with one of the twenty-four hours of the Japanese day, and depicts the women of the geisha houses engaged in the activities appropriate to that hour, from morning toilette and breakfast through professional engagements and the late-night return home. Yoshitoshi's compositions are full-figure, finely characterized portraits set against the carefully observed domestic interiors of the geisha quarter, with great attention to period costume, hairstyle, accessories and gesture. The series is one of the major bijin-ga statements of his late period and shares the controlled palette and psychological precision of his Fuzoku sanjuniso of 1888; together the two cycles constitute Yoshitoshi's central late-career contribution to the bijin-ga tradition. Impressions and complete sets are held in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the British Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Tokyo National Museum, and the series is consistently treated as a landmark Meiji bijin-ga in the standard Yoshitoshi literature.

The Twenty-Four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi series contains 1 prints, created by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi.

The Twenty-Four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi series was created by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡芳年).

We currently have 1 of 1 known prints from the Twenty-Four Hours in Shinbashi and Yanagibashi series indexed in our collection. Browse them all on this page.