second-storey restaurant-teahouse at the left. The main building appears to be a two-story restaurant-teahouse; the picture focuses on an atrium with a garden court in the middle surrounded by railings, revealing the snowy outdoors. With the exception of the young boy who reaches out at a cat in the lower left, all the figures are women, though in real life the guests of a pleasure house would be men. Several of the figures pose in a manner similar to those in the book (1804) that Utamaro illustrated around the time he completed this painting, such as the woman looking behind her in the hallway in the centre, the woman with her arm wrapped around a pillar in the centre, and the woman crouched down near her with her hand on the railing, looking to the right behind her. Several women lean over the rails to check the snow. A woman in the bottom left stops and looks down behind her at a cat tugging at her kimono; the kimono bears the Zenno family's crest on the shoulder. In the middle a woman carries a tray of food along the hallway. A group of guests sits around a heating device in a room at the right. In the upper right a woman carries a large bundle full of the courtesans' and geishas' bedclothes. Several women in a back room sit playing hand games. The women's kimono tend to be of subdued colours such as indigo or brown, in contrast with the bright, flashy colours of the other two paintings. It is believed Utamaro made the painting in . The collector Takeo Nagase purchased in Paris from an art dealer from Japan and brought it back to Japan in 1939. It was displayed in an exhibition () at the Matsuzakaya department store in the Ginza district of Tokyo in 1948. Thereafter the painting's whereabouts became unknown, and researchers made do with only black-and-white photography. The art dealer Seiichirō Teramoto rediscovered it in January 2012, and had its authenticity confirmed by Shūgō Asano. It was purchased by the Okada Museum of Art, which has declined to name who had it or where it was found. It has since had touch-up work done by a Chinese restorer. Notes References Works cited Works by Kitagawa Utamaro Collection of the Smithsonian Institution Maritime paintings Moon in art