Young Woman (Komurasaki?) as a Komusō Possibly 1770 - 1777

Editor: Here we have Suzuki Harunobu’s woodblock print, "Young Woman as a Komuso," from around the 1760s. The figure seems both elegant and a bit melancholic. What do you make of this image? Curator: The Komuso basket hat is key. It signifies a mendicant priest, but here, it's playfully donned by a woman. This cross-dressing act subverts social expectations, inviting us to consider the boundaries between identities and roles in Edo-period Japan. What memories and emotions does this visual paradox evoke in you? Editor: It makes me wonder about freedom and constraint – playing with roles, but maybe still bound by them. Curator: Exactly. The image becomes a vessel for exploring those tensions, echoing through time, even to our own era. Editor: This has given me so much to consider! Curator: Indeed, symbols always hold more than meets the eye.