Edo Pop Pick: Evening Snow on the Silk-Dryer

In celebration of our newest show, Edo Pop, each week, we are giving you a taste of the sensuality, fashion, and decadent entertainment of young urban sophisticates of Japan’s pre-modern era. If you haven’t experienced Edo Pop yet (or even if you already have), stop on by the MIA!  Read more about the exhibition here.

This Halloween, we bet you pretended to be something you were not, too!

Suzuki Harunobu, 1724/25–70 Evening Snow on the Silk-Dryer, From the series Eight Views of the Parlor, after 1766. Color woodblock print (nishiki-e).

This print shows a courtesan and her attendant drying cotton wadding (mawata) over lacquered heaters (nurioke). During the Edo period, watatsumi (cotton picker) was a euphemism for an unlicensed prostitute, and unlicensed brothels were operated under the guise of “cotton shops.” The casual posture of the main figure—who smokes a pipe rather than attending to the cotton—reinforces the idea that the women in this print are not truly shopkeepers.

Read more about this print!

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