The Courtesan Takigawa of the Ōgiya Brothel, from the series Seven Beautiful Komachi

Robed in a splendid floral kimono, the famous courtesan, Takigawa of the Ōgiya brothel in Yoshiwara sits before a hanging scroll portrait in her later years. Renowned for her beauty, Komachi’s legendary decline into decrepit old age was taken as a paradigm for the Buddhist concept of the ephemerality of life and its pleasures. Toyokuni shows the two famous beauties—one his contemporary and the other her predecessor by many centuries—facing each other in mirror image. This striking juxtaposition accentuates the dramatic contrast between them; Takigawa, holding a long-stemmed pipe, appears in the full bloom of her beauty, emphasized by the vivacious wildflowers which flow through her kimono, while the old woman Ono no Komachi leans on her staff among drab ditch reeds in the colorless hanging scroll. Thus, the great beauty of Takigawa is threatened by a pungent memento mori.

Accompanying the image of elderly Komachi is a waka (31-syllable court poem) recited by the character of the old woman in the medieval Noh play Komachi at the Stupa (Sotoba Komachi).

極楽の　うちならば社　あしからめ
そとはなにかは　くるしかるべき

Gokuraku no
uchi naraba koso
ashikarame
soto wa nanika wa
kurushikarubeki

If we were in Paradise,
it would be wrong indeed
to rest my legs upon a stupa,
but since we are still outside
is it such a distressing thing?

(Trans. John T. Carpenter)