Kitagawa Utamaro. Just uttering the name somehow stains the air of the room with the faint scent of white face powder, or perhaps makes one feel as if their fingertips have brushed against a piece of soft, supple silk. I shall tell you the tale of a truly extraordinary man—one who took all the dizzying brilliance of the Edo period and the indescribable loneliness clinging to its underside, and condensed it into a single, masterful stroke of a brush.
To begin with, beauty is a cruel thing. It is pure paradise if you are merely gazing upon it, but the moment you try to “capture” it, it slips through your fingers, whittling away at the soul of the pursuer. The painter known as Utamaro was a man of such agonizing passion that he staked his entire life on capturing the “fleeting expressions” of those elusive creatures we call women.
You are likely familiar with the technique he pioneered called “Okubi-e,” or the large-head portrait. Until then, the standard for ukiyo-e was to leisurely depict an actor’s full body or a peaceful landscape, but Utamaro was different. He zoomed in. He painted the face to fill the entire frame, much like staring into the eyes of a lover at close range. And these were no mere likenesses. He captured the trembling of eyelashes, the moisture of the lips, the fine down on an earlobe, and above all, the “secrets one cannot tell anyone” lurking deep within the pupils—all rendered with translucent color.
This was a revolution in “Bijin-ga,” or paintings of beautiful women. He did not paint mere pretty dolls. He painted a woman lost in a daze after a broken heart, a woman cowering before a mirror at the sight of her own aging, or a mother staring into the distant sky while nursing her babe. In his work, the raw, living human beings of the Edo streets were breathing.
However, the world does not simply leave a talent that is too sharp alone. Because Utamaro’s paintings drove the masses into such a frenzy, and because they were far too free, the stiff-necked officials of the Shogunate were not amused. The so-called Kansei Reforms—an incredibly stifling period of sumptuary laws—covered the world, and the tasteless logic that “luxury is the enemy” and “beauty is indiscreet” began to prevail.
Even so, Utamaro did not lay down his brush. On the contrary, with his delicate lines, he lightly stepped over the taboos of the authorities. Accused of painting works that ridiculed the powerful figures of the time, he was eventually sentenced to the punishment of “Te-dokura”—handcuffs. A painter whose hands were bound and who was forbidden from drawing. Could there be a more cruel punishment? For a man who loved freedom and believed in beauty, those fifty days must have been a time darker than hell itself.
Though he gripped his brush again after his sentence was lifted, his brilliance took on a sorrowful hue, like the final lingering rays of a setting sun. Yet, the many masterpieces he left behind still strike our hearts today across the span of time. This is because what he painted was not the specific customs of the Edo period, but the “universal loveliness” possessed by the creature known as a human being.
Today, we can easily view beautiful images on the screens of our smartphones. But I ask you to look closely at a painting by Utamaro. There, you will find “lines of life that seem to tremble,” something that can never be reproduced digitally. I feel as though Utamaro’s life teaches us that beauty is not something that simply exists, but something that someone whittled away their soul to discover and preserve.
When you think of it that way, perhaps “Utamaro-esque moments,” yet undiscovered by anyone, are hidden even within the casual scenery of our daily lives. A nameless flower blooming by the roadside, or the sudden profile of a family member waiting for dinner. Perhaps the secret to making life a little more interesting and rich lies in carefully scooping up such trivial beauties. I cannot help but feel that the stylish painter of Edo is whispering this to us, even now, across the ages.