Author
Kitagawa Utamaro
Movement / period
Ukiyo-e
Technique
colour woodblock print
Where it is
Private and museum collections
The faces are almost identical: for Utamaro the ideal of beauty matters more than likeness.
Highlights
Facts & legends
- The three women are real Edo celebrities; they can be identified only by the crests on their kimonos.
- The faces are almost identical: for Utamaro the ideal of beauty matters more than likeness.
- The background shimmers with mica powder — a costly device of luxury prints.
- Utamaro is the great master of 'bijin-ga', prints of beautiful women.
- Through Japonisme such sheets influenced Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh.
Estimated value
What it is worth today
Three Beauties is an Utamaro woodblock print; impressions are held in museums and collections, and rare examples fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars at auction.
More details Utamaro placed three real Edo celebrities on one sheet. Censors soon removed their names, yet viewers still recognised Ohisa, Okita, and Toyohina through crests, hairstyles, and minute differences between their faces.
These are not three anonymous ideals
Edo residents knew their names and where they could be encountered
At the upper centre is Tomimoto Toyohina, a geisha of the Tamamuraya house in Yoshiwara and an accredited performer of tomimoto-bushi music on the shamisen. Lower left is Takashima Ohisa, daughter of a rice-cracker seller in Ryogoku, who helped in the family shop. At right is Naniwaya Okita, daughter of a teahouse proprietor near the gate of Senso-ji in Asakusa. All three were city celebrities before the print appeared.
The selection differs from conventional images of high-ranking courtesans. Ohisa and Okita were young townspeople whose beauty drew customers to family businesses; Toyohina had a professional reputation as musician and entertainer. Utamaro converted street conversation into a celebrity portrait, while the printed edition allowed buyers to possess the image of women they had heard about or glimpsed at a distance.
The arrangement resembles a Buddhist triad
A secular fashion image borrows a solemn scheme normally reserved for sacred figures
Toyohina rises above the other two and the three heads form a stable pyramid. The Chiba City Museum of Art explicitly compares this disposition to a Buddhist triad: a commanding centre supported by two flanking figures. Utamaro borrows a structure of veneration familiar to viewers, but fills it with contemporary women from the urban leisure economy.
This is a single nishiki-e sheet, not a triptych of three separate prints. Bodies are cropped at the chest, there is no setting, and the women nearly fill the paper. Such 'large-head pictures,' or okubi-e, were strongly associated with Kabuki actors. In portraiture of women, the close-up made hairline, neck, lips, and the direction of the eyes the entire event.
The faces resemble one another but are not identical
Utamaro combines a fashionable ideal with observation of particular features
All three women have long ovals, fine brows, small mouths, and extended necks. This is the period's language of beauty, not evidence that the artist could not distinguish his sitters. The Toledo Museum notes how Utamaro alters eye spacing, nose shape, ear placement, and head angle while maintaining a common formula.
Ohisa turns more softly and appears younger; Okita's gaze is more direct, while Toyohina seems older and more composed. The differences are easy to miss on a screen because they reward slow comparison of a print held nearby. The portrait behaves like three musical variations: individuality emerges from subtle displacement within a shared rhythm, not from caricature.
Censorship erased names but not recognition
Crests became visual code after a 1793 prohibition
Okita's fan bears a paulownia crest, Ohisa's kimono the triple oak leaf, and Toyohina's sleeve a primrose. These signs identified the women even before a caption was read. In 1793 the government prohibited names of women other than licensed courtesans from appearing on colour prints. The Chiba City Museum records a second state from which 'present day' and all three names were removed.
The ban created a game of recognition rather than anonymity. A publisher could delete text while retaining the crests, and the sitters' fame made the hints sufficient. Different states now make censorship visible: one impression names a city celebrity, another officially reduces her to a 'beauty,' although a contemporary buyer still knew exactly whom it represented.
The luxury image was collectively manufactured
Mica, multiple blocks, and a publisher's strategy turned paper into fashionable media
The design was issued by Tsutaya Juzaburo, a crucial cultural entrepreneur of Edo. Utamaro supplied the design; carvers transferred lines and colour areas to cherry blocks; printers registered them on damp paper. In the most luxurious versions, powdered mica covered the ground, catching light and separating the faces from space like a metallic mirror.
Several formats and states survive. The Chiba City Museum describes a cheaper medium-size version on less costly paper as well as a larger mica-printed design. The 'original' is therefore not one unique object but a family of impressions differing in pigments, paper, and printing stage. Reproduction made the women icons: beauty circulated much as a magazine cover or social image does today.
Official sources
Where to check
- Three Beauties of the Present Day: identities, editions, and censorshipChiba City Museum of Art
- Three Beauties of the Present Day: collection recordToledo Museum of Art
- Portrait innovations and the three identified womenToledo Museum of Art / Google Arts & Culture
- Three Beauties of the Kwansei PeriodThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Naniwaya Okita and the silver mica backgroundThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Takashima Ohisa: portrait, costume, and poemThe British Museum
- Utamaro and the collaborative craft of woodblock printingThe Metropolitan Museum of Art
Visual context
