Beauties and Actors

Kitagawa Utamaro

Yamauba and Kintarō

c. 1795

Woodblock print; ink and color on paper, 38.4 × 22.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A legendary mountain woman and the wild boy she raised lean close in a quiet moment.

• He returned to mother and boy many times.
• Over his 1804 triptych of the Taikō, he was jailed and then kept in hand chains for fifty days.
• In legend, Kintarō grew up to become the warrior Sakata no Kintoki.

Taikō

Title of the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537–1598).

Image: The Met Open Access · Public domain (Met Open Access)