Young Woman at Night accompanied by a Servant Carrying a Lantern and a Shamisen Box

This print presents a quiet nocturnal moment from late-eighteenth-century Japan. A young woman walks at night clutching her robes, her posture cautious, while a servant follows close behind carrying both a lantern and a rectangular box that holds a shamisen, a three-stringed lute.

The artist Kitagawa Kikumaro, also known as Tsukimaro, was active in Edo (now Tokyo) during the early years of the nineteenth century. Although known for images of women and genre scenes, his career was marked by controversy. In 1804 he was arrested for producing unauthorized prints depicting Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a powerful sixteenth-century military leader. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, representations of historical rulers and politically sensitive subjects were subject to censorship and strict regulation.

Working within the tradition of ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world," Tsukimaro drew on the visual language of popular print culture to represent everyday life, fashion, and the activities of urban society.