Height: 31.60 centimetres

Length: 700 millimetres

The twelve scenes in the scroll are as follows: 1. Ushiwakamaru (the future warrior hero Yoshitsune) and Princess Jōruri. Enclosed by a folding screen and branches of blossoming cherry, they recline against the koto (transverse harp) that she was playing on the night when he visited her secretly and joined in with his flute (placed on the floor beside him). Thus the scroll begins with a non-explicit, courtly and romantic scene of these archetypal young lovers of the twelfth century. Gold leaf is used on the border of the screen. 2. The spring season continues with a scene of lovers beneath cherry blossom on the embankment of the Sumida River across from Mimeguri, a popular spot for flower viewing. The top of the stone gateway of Mimeguri Shrine can be seen over the top of the embankment on the opposite bank. The woman wears a head-cloth typical of a maid from a samurai mansion and a brilliant brocade sash with dragons. 3. The woman is a waitress at a tea-stall serving flower- viewing customers. The name of the stall ‘Shigaraki’ appears on a lantern hanging on the brushwood fence. 4. The season switches to summer, with a couple making love in a garden at night, leaning against a stone lantern and surrounded by dancing fireflies, next to a pool with blossoming iris. The fan attached to a bamboo pole is used to catch fireflies. 5. A second couple make love in a pavilion on the water’s edge, the woman’s body half obscured by a hanging mosquito net. The young man has not yet shaved the pate of his head in mature adult style, and so must still be in his teens. 6. A near-naked couple make love on a single summer mattress, enclosed by a split-bamboo screen decorated with panels of pinks. 7. The scene is a suite of upstairs party rooms at a house of pleasure in the Shinagawa quarter, looking out over Edo Bay with Tsukuda Island and its fishing fleet in the distance. A man dallies with a geisha who has come to play shamisen music at the party. Food and sake stand waiting on the tatami matting alongside. 8. A man makes love to a courtesan of the unlicensed Shinagawa quarter on a balcony overlooking Edo Bay, on a night illuminated by a full autumn moon. 9. A samurai of high status, perhaps a feudal lord, is spied mainly in silhouette through an interior window in cusped courtly style, perhaps in his mansion. In the corridor outside, a young page waits in attendance holding his master’s sword and he is embraced by a mature maid from the household. The large bell suspended in the partly-open window serves as an alarm. 10. It is now winter and lovers are enveloped in the quilt of a large table-brazier (kotatsu). The setting is a suite of rooms in a house of pleasure in the licensed Yoshiwara quarter, on the northern fringes of Edo. The sliding doors behind are painted with gulls, celebrated in literature and poetry as inhabiting the northern reaches of the Sumida River. 11. In the adjacent room, a man makes love to a teenage apprentice courtesan (shinzō), identified by the long, hanging sleeves of her robe. Through a round window is seen a vignette of Nihon-tsutsumi (‘Japan Embankment’), the approach through snow-covered rice fields to Yoshiwara quarter, and a bough of flowering plum also dusted with snow. A customer is being transported along the embankment in a palanquin. 12. The final, brilliant scene is the luxuriously appointed boudoir of a Yoshiwara courtesan. The triple bed quilts, the aureole of her tortoiseshell hairpins and the heavy fur-trimmed coverlet with Chinese dragons all denote her high-ranked status. Alongside the bed quilts is a lacquer and gilt-bronze smoking set. The couple are surrounded by a large folding screen painted with idealised Chinese landscapes and pavilions. Eishi’s signature and seal are positioned as if painted on the screen. The screen is painted in the Chinese- derived, academic style of the Kano school in which Eishi first trained. The most important monograph concerning the artist is Klaus J. Brandt, Hosoda Eishi (1756-1829) – Der Japanische Maler und Holzschnittmeister under seine Schüler, Stuttgart, 1977. Only three erotic paintings are recorded: nos. 491, 500, 501. No. 491 reproduces part of a scene very similar to no. 9 above, so there seem to have been at least two versions of the present erotic scroll. No more details of this second version are recorded. For more on the artist, see also Timothy Clark, Ukiyo-e Paintings in the British Museum, London, BMP, 1992, nos. 72-80, pp. 122-131.