Toji san bijin (Three beauties of the present day)

Asano Shugo and Timothy Clark discuss this image in The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (Tokyo and London: Asahi Shimbunsha and Trustees of the British Museum, 1995), pl. 104: the woman holding the round fan with the paulownia (kiri) crest (bottom right) is Naniwaya Okita; she with the crest of triple oak-leaves (mitsugashiwa) (bottom left) is Takashima Ohisa; and the woman in the center at the top, with the crest of primulas (sakuraso) on her sleeve, Tomimoto Toyohina. In what is thought the first printing, there is a printed title "Toji san bijin" and the printed names of the three women in the top right corner. This impression is probably the second printing, with these inscriptions removed. There is one impression from this second printing which has handwritten inscriptions reading "Naniwaya Okita went to Osaka," "Takashima Ohisa [married into] a rice-cake business in Asakusa" and "Tomimoto Toyohina became the concubine of a feudal lord." The design is particularly prized for the manner in which Utamaro merged certain distinctive features of each woman with an idealized portrait of a beauty.

Other impressions are held by The New York Public Library; Hiraki Ukiyo-e Museum, Yokohama; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge, Mass.; The Japan Ukiyoe Museum, Matsumoto; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.