Kasen Koi no Bu (, "Anthology of Poems: The Love Section") is a series of five ukiyo-e prints designed by the Japanese artist Utamaro and published . The series title parodies the section headings in waka and kyōka poetry anthologies, and takes the theme of love. The women depicted are not courtesans or others employed in the pleasure districts, who were the typically subjects of ukiyo-e portraits of beauties. The prints were printed by Tsutaya Jūzaburō using luxurious techniques such as dusting the backgrounds with rose-coloured mica. In 2016 the print Fukaku Shinobu Koi set the record price for an ukiyo-e print sold at auction at €. 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. Description and analysis The five bijin ōkubi-e pictures in the series are nishiki-e multicolour woodblock prints in ōban size, about . They were published by Tsutaya Jūzaburō using luxurious printing techniques. The backgrounds are dusted with glittering beni-kira, a dust made of lepidolite, a rose-coloured type of mica, used to emphasize the theme of love. The women in this series are not courtesans or others employed in the pleasure districts, who were typically the subjects of ukiyo-e bijin-ga. Compared to Utamaro's similar earlier series Fujin Sōgaku Jittai and Fujo Ninsō Juppin, the faces are much more close up, and the facial features and expressions more individuated and finely detailed. By focusing on the theme of love in Kasen