The Tactic of Meeting Up at a Tea House

Catalog note / 解説

Woodblock prints such as this were produced in large numbers in 18th- and 19th-century Japan. This print was published in the early 1800s, by which time the techniques of full-colour printing had been perfected. Prints such as this are called <i>ukiyo-e</i>, which means 'pictures of the floating world’. This world was one of transient delights and changing fashions centred on the licensed pleasure districts and popular theatres found in the major cities of Japan. This print is taken from a series examining 'forty-eight tactics of the Floating World'. The two women seem to be sharing a secret; perhaps the woman in the foreground (whose blackened teeth and shaved eyebrows indicate that she is…