Takashima Ohisa 高島おひさ

This kyoka poem is written in the poem-paper-shaped cartouche in the upper left of this print. It describes the personality of Ohisa, a beautiful young woman serving tea in the Takashima tea and sweets shop. In this print by Utamaro, Ohisa is directing her sprightly gaze at someone, her lovely lips composed as though about to speak. She is wearing her hair in a Shimada chignon with lantern-like sides, a style worn by unmarried women. She was about seventeen when this print was created. How many Edoites visited the shop just to see her? Ohisa was the daughter of Takashima Chobei, a maker of senbei snacks who resided at Yagenbori Yonezawa-cho 2-chome, Ryogoku, in Edo (now roughly Higashi Nihonbashi 2-chome, Chuo Ward). She assisted at her family’s tea and sweets shop, the Takashimaya. The triple oak-leaf crest on the fan she is holding was the Takashimaya seal. Since stating the name of a woman, other than a courtesan, in a polychrome print had been prohibited in 1793, the crest on her fan and the kyoka poem are included instead to indicate that this figure is Ohisa. In 1792 and 1793, several women were generating considerable discussion in Edo, and prints appeared rating the pretty girls serving at tea shops. Among them, Ohisa and Okita of the Naniwaya, which was located beside the Zuishinmon gate of Sensoji Temple, were the city’s idols, sharing the top popularity rankings. With the geisha Tomimoto Toyohina of the Tamamuraya in the Yoshiwara (or, in some versions, Ohan of the Kikumoto, a tea house near the Shiba Shinmei Shrine), they constituted the “Three Beauties of the Kansei Era.” Kitagawa Utamaro also produced Naniwaya Okita, a print that forms a pair with this one. Utamaro’s depictions of beautiful women, with subtly different renderings of their expressions, drawing out their individual personalities, were vastly popular.