Suzuki
Harunobu, Woman Playing the Shakuhachi, ca. 1770. Perhaps this is just an
innocent depiction of a young woman playing the shakuhachi in the
wintertime (notice the many layers of her robes)? Most unlikely, considering that
the shakuhachi was a common phallic symbol of the time as well as this
artist's vast output of eroticized imagery. The poem on it reads:
In the light of the moon,
Her idle plaything in the bedroom,
Breezy sounds
An inscription for this image identifies the woman as Katsuragi--a prostitute's name.