Kasumi-ori Musume Hinagata (, "Model Young Women in Mist") is a print series by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Kitagawa Utamaro. The theme is of beautiful women seen through different woven materials. Three prints from the series are known; whether there were more is unknown. Background Ukiyo-e art flourished in Japan during the Edo period from the 17th to 19th centuries, and took as its primary subjects courtesans, kabuki actors, and others associated with the "floating world" lifestyle of the pleasure districts. Alongside paintings, mass-produced woodblock prints were a major form of the genre. In the mid-18th century full-colour prints became common, printed using a large number of woodblocks, one for each colour. A prominent genre was ("pictures of beauties"), which depicted most often courtesans and geisha at leisure, and promoted the entertainments of the pleasure districts. Kitagawa Utamaro (–1806) made his name in the 1790s with his bijin ōkubi-e ("large-headed pictures of beautiful women") portraits, focusing on the head and upper torso, a style others had previously employed in portraits of kabuki actors. Utamaro experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background. Utamaro's individuated beauties were in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been the norm. Publication The series was published in by Tsutaya Jūzaburō. It is not known how many were in the series; three are known, of which very few copies are known. The bear the seal Utamaro hitsu (, "the brush of Utamaro"). The prints are untitled, and variations of the titles that follow exist in both English and Japanese. Description and analysis The series theme is of beautiful women seen through translucent woven materials. Two women appear in each print, one in front and one behind and seen through the translucent materials. Kasumi-ori (, "mist-woven") is a neologism Utamaro uses to refer to materials woven so that they can be seen through unclearly, as in a mist. The translucent effect in the prints required the highest level of skill from their carvers and careful moderation of the baren burnishing tool by the printers. Kachō In Kachō (, "Mosquito net", the same characters also pronounced kaya), a woman peers through a light yellowish-green mosquito net of thin silk gauze, an item of great luxury at the time; commoners made such nets of hemp or