A Girl Writing a Letter

Suzuki Harunobu made this print, "A Girl Writing a Letter," in the mid-1760s using woodblock and ink on paper. In the world of the Edo period, printed images helped disseminate new cultural trends. Here, two young women occupy a domestic interior, divided by a screen decorated with birds. One sits with paper and writing box, perhaps composing a poem or missive, while the other stands and looks on, holding a goose in her hands. The scene is one of cultivated leisure, of a kind that would have been increasingly available to the growing merchant classes of Japan at the time. Prints like this allowed people to see how others lived, inspiring social mobility. The print also shows the rise of women in cultural life as arbiters of taste and fashion. As historians, we can look at the visual culture of the time, along with economic data and literary references to gain a better understanding of the social dynamics that shaped this image and the world it reflected.