Tsukasa and Other Courtesans of the Ogiya Watching the Autumn Moon Rise Over Rice Fields from a Balcony in the Yoshiwara (1799): Art, History and Details

Tsukasa and Other Courtesans of the Ogiya Watching the Autumn Moon Rise Over Rice Fields from a Balcony in the Yoshiwara (1799) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Gomeirō is another name for the fashionable teahouse Ōgi-ya (House of Fans) in the Yoshiwara district of Edo (present-day Tokyo). Two courtesans, each attended by a geisha and a shinzō (apprentice to a courtesan) view a full autumn moon as it rises over the surrounding paddy fields. The elegance of the women's flowing robes and the serenity of the evening with a full silver moon contribute to the poetic atmosphere of this surimono, a privately commissioned print usually accompanied by text—here, a poem, which reads: What liveliness! Geisha, shinzō, and jesters fill the room, all guests of the moon.

Object facts

• Title: Tsukasa and Other Courtesans of the Ogiya Watching the Autumn Moon Rise Over Rice Fields from a Balcony in the Yoshiwara
• Date: 1799
• Creator attribution: Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Print
• Technique: Surimono; color woodblock print
• Dimensions: Sheet: 56.6 x 21 cm (22 5/16 x 8 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1943.4

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Ralph King

Further reading listed by the museum

• Bowie, Theodore Robert, James T. Kenney, and Fumiko Togasaki. Art of the Surimono: [Exhibition], Indiana University Art Museum, February 25-March 25, 1979. Bloomington, IN: The Museum, 1979.
• Basch, Sophie. Le Japonisme, Un Art Français. Œuvres En Sociétés. Dijon: Les Presses du réel, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.