Social Position of Women
in the Edo Period

Despite the shogunate's efforts to maintain status-based distinctions (samurai, peasant, artisan, merchant), cultural tastes in the city of Edo were not so different. Rising income, increasing leisure, and growing literacy enabled women and most residents to engage in social and cultural activities to some extent.

The cultivation of leisure was a key to raise up social status of women who worked in the pleasure quarter. They were influential in setting standards in dress, hair style, and personal cultivation. The paintings include all manner of images of women enjoying pastimes and pleasures, whether Kabuki or other theatrical forms, informal pilgrimages or scenery-viewing journeys, eating and drinking, and smoking. The presentation of women's figures in these scenes give viewers a sense of the extremely powerful life-force and presence in these women as they actively engage in the pleasures of living. In addition to the dynamic beauty of the forms of these women at work and women at play, these paintings also vividly convey the society and cultures they lived in.

The women of the pleasure quarters, beautifully gowned and coiffed and known as tayu, served a dozen men in a single night, but their social position was ranked very high. They were expected to be skilled in music, poetry, painting, calligraphy, and other arts. Therefore, they succeeded the culture of the Heian court.

There are a multitude of works which show women in their everyday lives, whether working, playing, or relaxing. From such works, viewers get a fresh sense of the vitality and energy of women. These paintings depict women at work in a surprisingly diverse array of occupations. These images remind us of the importance placed on women's roles in society.

At pleasure quarter

At leasure

Digging clams

Dancing