A man interrupts woman combing her long hair 1799

This print was made by Kitagawa Utamaro in Japan, during the Edo period, using woodblock printing techniques. In it, we see an intimate scene, a man interrupting a woman as she combs her hair. The image offers us insight into the social customs and expectations around love and sexuality in 18th-century Japan. Utamaro was working in a culture with distinct class divisions, and a rigid social hierarchy, where pleasure districts and the floating world of the geisha offered an alternative to the strict codes of samurai society. Prints like these give visual form to those worlds and suggest ways that erotic life was part of the wider economic and social life of the city. The image is also carefully composed, with the arrangement of bodies and the interplay of glances creating a narrative tension. By studying the art and literature of this period, we can begin to understand the complex dynamics of gender and desire in Edo-period Japan. Ultimately, this image reminds us that art is always a product of its time, shaped by the social and institutional forces that surround it.