Café Waitress (Jokyū)

In Shimazaki Ryūu’s usually conservative corpus of bijinga (pictures of female beauties) this work stands out for its novelty and unique setting of a Taishō-period café. The artist has captured a waitress taking a break in a French-style café, though we can be sure the setting is the Ginza district of Tokyo—the only place in Japan at this time with such establishments. She is shown dressed in a dark blue kimono, with bold white floral patterns, partially covered by a Western-style apron. Wiping her face with cloth napkin with one hand, she rests the other on a table with a Western-style ashtray and a set of sauces in a glass bottles. Behind her on ornately carved wooden shelves is an array of variously shaped bottles that we can safely assume hold imported alcoholic beverages. The artist suggests that his subject is a bit tired from a busy shift, but innocent in demeanor, and not depicted as a café waitress (jokyū) who doubled as a female escort as would become more prevalent in paintings of Ginza café scenes in the late 1920s.

The artist is capturing both the actual appearance and ambiance of the cafés that were created in the 1910s in the Ginza district. Most notably, in 1911 Café Printemps (Kafe Purantan), Café Lion and Café Paulista were opened, and were still among the nearly twenty Western-style cafés in the area until 1923 when Tokyo was leveled by the Great Kantō Earthquake. Surviving photographs and postcards of the day show what the cafés looked like, and how the waitresses who wore frilled aprons over traditional kimono. They served Western drinks, coffee, and light Western-style meals. At first members only, but eventually open to the public, such cafés were designed to be convivial gathering spots for an intellectual and cultured clientele. We are reminded that the artist Ryūu was active in such circles, and was a close friend, for instance, of Natsume Sōseki (1867–1916), one of the most eminent writers of the day.

Shimazaki Ryūū was born in Edo, scion of the family of a Confucian scholar. As a youth he was trained in Chinese classical literature and calligraphy—and earned renown as one of the most talented calligraphers of all Nihonga artists. He briefly studied Yōga (Western-style painting) beginning in 1879 but soon switched to Nihonga and received training under Matsumoto Fuko (1840–1923) and Kawabata Gyokushō (1842–1913), both Tokyo-based painters in traditional Japanese styles. Ryūu was best known for his bijinga and achieved renown for his carefully researched and accurate depictions of the kimono textiles that adorned his subjects. His submissions to the government sponsored Bunten exhibitions until around 1919 or so usually adhered to conservative styles and themes drawn from Chinese and Japanese literature or captured traditional Japanese customs and manners of his time.