Introduction

Exhibition Sections

Hishikawa Moronobu
Okumura Masanobu
Suzuki Harunobu
Katsukawa Shunshō
Tsutaya Jūzaburō
Hokusai and His Circle
The Nineteenth Century

Reference

Credits
Exhibition Information
Related Events
Media

Suzuki Harunobu: Prints in Full Color

The Motoya was a brothel in the Fukagawa district of Edo, and the client in this print is a date komusō. Date means something like “fop”; komusō were Buddhist friars who had license to wander the streets wearing basket hats and playing the shakuhachi (bamboo end-blown flute). Date komusō started to appear as characters on the kabuki stage from the early eighteenth century onward. A man wishing to visit a brothel incognito might disguise himself as a komusō.

Photo: Courtesy of lender

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