A Courtesan

Teisai Hokuba concentrated on highly detailed paintings of female beauties (bijinga) of the Yoshiwara pleasure district of the capital city of Edo (modern-day Tokyo). Like other ukiyo-e artists, Hokuba offered an idealized world of beauty, and he did not dwell on the more sordid aspects of the day-to-day life of prostitutes residing in the brothels of Yoshiwara.

In this richly colored diptych, Hokuba expands on this ideal vision of a courtesan and her male counterpart through a complex interplay of visual and literary references. The women’s exposed neck, for example, is a familiar erotic motif in Japanese art, while the bamboo flute held in the young man’s hands was widely equated with male genitalia. These visual allusions are further complicated by the addition of two "mad verse" (kyoka) poems that employ complex puns and references to convey subtle suggestions of sexual attraction.

Such unusual features as the white elephant on the sash of the female entertainer and the lion on the robe of the man add another layer of meaning, marking these figures as the two bodhisattvas (supreme beings of Buddhist enlightenment) named Fugen and Monju. This link between Buddhism and prostitution was far from an impudent parody; just as the bodhisattva was believed to exist in this world yet remain disconnected from it, the courtesan was similarly engaged in paid sex yet disinterested in it. In such paintings, the fleeting joys of the brothel district are aligned also with the Buddhist idea of impermanence.