A Woman Sweeping up Her Love Letters 1725 - 1770

Suzuki Harunobu created this polychrome woodblock print, titled "A Woman Sweeping up Her Love Letters," in Japan in the mid-1700s. Here we see a woman, likely a courtesan, tidying away the remnants of past affections. The love letters, symbols of fleeting romance, are swept away with an air of melancholy. In the Edo period, the floating world of courtesans was both a site of artistic inspiration and a complex social space where women navigated the expectations of beauty, desire, and economic exchange. Harunobu’s work often idealized women and everyday life. Here, the discarded letters could speak to the transient nature of relationships. The act of sweeping might resonate with the emotional labor often performed by women in managing affairs of the heart. This print encourages us to consider the intimate stories behind conventional representations of women, revealing the emotional dimensions of life in Japan's pleasure districts.