Description
Beautiful woodblock printed double-page illustration made by the artist Utagawa Sadatora (歌川貞虎) and depicting an oiran (花魁) courtesan, in the company of a guest on the balcony of a pleasure house in the Shin Yoshiwara (新吉原) district, during the flowering of the cherry trees.
The work is taken from vol. 1 (上) of the erotic shunpon (春本) “Kaichu soshi” (開中荘子), translatable “The Vagina Taoist”, the title of which is a parody of that of the collection of essays entitled “Inaka soshi” (田舎荘子), that is “The Country Taoist”, written in 1727 by the samurai Issai Chozan (佚斎樗山).
In the aforementioned book, published in 1831 in collaboration with the writer Bunya Nakiyasu (文屋泣安), the artist signs himself Joransai Sukinari (如乱斎好成) and it cannot be excluded that the print presented here, which is in good general condition, may be a later edition.
