A Courtesan Reading a Book

Unidentified

Not on view

This young woman, her hair twisted up into a modified “palace-style” looped chignon (gosho-fū), lies in a pensive pose with her head propped on one hand. By the light of a single lamp, she reads a book that is open on the floor before her. The poem, inscribed in kana using the scattered-writing (chirashi-gaki) mode, is signed Moshio—a courtesan in the Shimabara pleasure quarters in Kyoto.
The waka inscribed here is playfully adapted from a verse by the poet-scholar-calligrapher Fujiwara no Teika (1162–1241). It reads:

ぬしやたれ　みぬよの色を　うつしおく
ふでのすさびに　かよふ おもかげ もしをほ

Who are you, my lady?
Sketched with playful brush
your visage as you come and go
resembles someone I once knew
from that unseen world of amorous love.
—[signed] Moshio

—Trans. John T. Carpenter

A Courtesan Reading a Book, Unidentified Artist, ca. 1655–61, Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, Japan

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A Courtesan Reading a Book, Unidentified Artist, ca. 1655–61, Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, Japan
A Courtesan Reading a Book, Unidentified Artist, ca. 1655–61, Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, Japan
A Courtesan Reading a Book, Unidentified Artist, ca. 1655–61, Hanging scroll; ink and color on silk, Japan

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