The Printmaker's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

hunching against the wind, we headed away from town toward the Yoshiwara.
    The publisher’s shop was just outside the Great Gate. I peered across into the brothel quarter. The street was gray and wet. The moat was brown, stirred up because of the rain. One courtesan was picking her way home, clogs covered in mud, bare feet white with streaks of dirt. Courtesans were not allowed to wear tabi, socks. Mine were not clean, but at least I had them. It was a strange hour, before midday, the Hour of the Snake. Normally no one of any importance was around, but today the caterers were lugging crates of tofu from the shop. Mitsu was washing her front steps, and men from the neighborhood association were stringing lanterns among the bare branches of the trees.
    My father took a seat at the teashop next door to the publisher’s. The waitress set a cup of tea in front of him and gave me an almond cookie. Hokusai was cold, dirty, and thirsty. But he could not drink; his mind was occupied. I wanted him to at least put his hands around the warm cup. He told me to be quiet. I made myself small.
    A balding, worried individual appeared beside us, polishing the top of his head with a hand, the hair there being sparse; maybe he thought it was dust and he was trying to rub it off.
    “You disappear for weeks on end, and now you come to dig me out at my grandmother’s teahouse?”
    “If I don’t ‘disappear,’ how can I get my work done? I have new designs.”
    The publisher paced to the door. “If I had any sense, I’d drop you.”
    My father dimpled in a way calculated to charm. “But you won’t, Tsutaya, because I’m good, correct?”
    “Let’s see what you’ve got. Then I’ll tell you if you’re any good.”
    My father bristled, but he opened his satchel. He put the designs on the table out of my reach. I could feel the tension. The bald man came and stood over us. The pictures were of courtesans under the moon, courtesans with flowers, courtesans walking by the canal. “Hmmm,” he mumbled reluctantly. And “Hmmph” and “Hmmmph.”
    More pictures, then: of foreign men riding on horseback—Koreans, they must have been. Of teahouse girls.
    “Give me lovers’ suicides,” said Tsutaya.
    Hokusai lifted some papers. Boys gathering leaves. Children at the seashore. Tsutaya cleared his throat with impatience.
    This man was an adopted son of the great publisher Tsutaya Juzaburo, whom the artists still lamented. He had died ten years before. The artists said he was a genius. I had heard the men talk about him. Myself, I wondered. He was the son of a brothel owner. They were mean, greedy men, I knew that. This Tsutaya’s father had had a bright idea, that was all. He bought the rights to publish the saiken guidebooks, with their tiny writing and columns full of symbols giving a prostitute’s rank, how much it cost to buy her for a night, and what she would do.
    The saiken were popular. When a tsu —that is, a sophisticate—comes through the gate, he wants to know about the courtesans for sale. He buys one of these little books. You can see him walking along, his head bent over the pages, his ears red with excitement, his breath coming shallow and fast. He could collide with a lamppost, or even with the famous courtesan Hana-ogi on her way to a teahouse, and not know it.
    We watched them often enough, my father and I. My father would yell out, “Fool! Reading the map when you should be enjoying the view.”
    The guidebooks sold not only to newcomers but to regular customers as well, because they wanted to know how their sweethearts stood up in the ratings.
    And naturally the saiken were of interest to the prostitutes themselves. They looked themselves up to discover if their value was rising or—more likely—falling. They were always getting older, and this was noted in the saiken, even though the ages were never accurate. The guidebooks were advertisements, not truth. They didn’t exactly have the best interests of the