Saruwaka-cho Kogiku by Toyohara Kunichika. Ukiyo-e print showing a beautiful woman, Kogiku, looking at photographic portraits (cartes de visite), possibly of her admirers. Photography was so new in Japan when this print was created that the artist is also representing his country's growing contact with the western world and modern technology. The sake and grilled fish in the rectangle above the woman's head show one restaurant's culinary specialties. The long, vertical cartouche on the right calls the woman Kogiku, which translates as "small chrysanthemum," and gives the address in Saruwaka-Cho (now Asakusa), an entertainment district in Japan's capital city. The stamp on the carte de visite represents the noted Tokyo portrait photographer Uchida Kuichi (1844-1875), who had a studio in Asakusa. Toyohara Kunichika (豊原 国周 Toyohara Kunichika) (1835–1900) was a Japanese woodblock print artist. Talented as a child, at about thirteen he became a student of Tokyo's then-leading print maker, Utagawa Kunisada. His deep appreciation and knowledge of kabuki drama led to his production primarily of ukiyo-e actor-prints, which are woodblock prints of kabuki actors and scenes from popular plays of the time. An alcoholic and womanizer, Kunichika also portrayed women deemed beautiful (bijinga), contemporary social life, and a few landscapes and historical scenes. He worked successfully in the Edo period, and carried those traditions into the Meiji period. To his contemporaries and now to some modern art historians, this has been seen as a significant achievement during a transitional period of great social and political change in Japan's history.