Untitled from the series Famous Places in Edo Compared with One Hundred Beautiful Women (Edo meisho hyakunin bijo)

Utagawa Kunisada, Untitled from the series Famous Places in Edo Compared with One Hundred Beautiful Women (Edo meisho hyakunin bijo) woodblock print, ink and color, 35.7 cm x 24.6 cm

These two prints are part of a series by Utagawa Kunisada, who designed the beautiful women in the front, and a small collaboration with his pupil Utagawa Kunihisa II (1832-1891), who tended to designing the landscape cartouches. Although the identities of the women are unknown, a lot can be inferred based on elements such as the blackening of teeth known as ohaguro and the shaved off eyebrows known as hikimayu. Such subtle traits indicate that the woman on the left was likely married. Their kimonos and hair accessories also vary greatly in pattern and formality but are of a high quality inaccessible to lower classes. The woman on the right is embellished with larger hair accessories, her kimono appears to contain more layers, and her obi is a bit more lavish. It can be assumed that the settings these women are in are the same locations as the smaller cartouches they are being compared to, essentially personifying these charming scenes of Edo.