Passively Passionately Smoking
The Fleeting Nature Of Something
This woodblock print is Courtesan Smoking by the Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro from somewhere between 1755 and 1806 when he lived, probably 1790’s. It is a high-ranking courtesan or oiran, which means she would have been famous, from the pleasure quarters – an Ukiyo-e or “picture of the floating world” which typically depicted daily life and entertainment. The print is an okubi-e, a close-up portrait view of the upper body, which was a popular style at the time.
Utamaro was considered a master of this, the bijinga genre - pictures of beautiful women.
Ukiyo-e, the floating world, takes its name from the Buddhist term, ukiyo, which expresses the notion of the fleeting nature of life. During the Edo period, even though the nature of society was formal and highly ordered, impermanence was celebrated and not mourned, these depictions of daily life were sanctioned.
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They are in the room with me and I can feel their skin next to the texture of the soft indigo kimono, a yakata, or item of nightwear, with a tie-dyed pattern, each flower shape fitting easily in my palm. Japanese tie-dye is next level although this is quite a humble version. The ease of it all, the fabric around her waist perhaps an obi or kimono sash, has a Sayagata pattern on it of interlocking Manji (Swastika) in a persimmon, orange, pink colour – the overall decoration represents life and strength, eternity and harmony, and good fortune in Buddhism, typical of the period.
The yakata has fallen open to reveal her breasts.
If you look closely at the print, you will see the smoke exhaled through the courtesan’s mouth, embossed into the paper.
Her mouth pursed making room for the smoke, which is still alive leaving her lips and she gazes off along the scored lines of the trails. But she is not looking at the smoke. She has other things on her mind. The pipe is likely made of bamboo with a silver mouth piece, fashionable at the time, it is a slim pipe, part of the before, the foreplay to me, to others the post, the afterglow. Her right hand has just lowered slightly to blow the smoke out of her mouth, it is held there on purpose, an invitation, her thumb placed confidently at the end of the mouth piece which has just been in her mouth. This is control. The pushed-up sleeve held by her left hand directs the eye to the tender underneath of her upper arm - she will let it all fall to the ground when the time is right. Her wrist is casually bent, her fingers are on the verge. And of course, the line along the nape of her neck.
During the Edo period it became common for women to use an oily hair product to create the smooth look and in order not to get it onto their clothes, the kimono was pulled back away from the body - all other parts of the body except the hands and face were covered. The practice remained to show this area long after this time when new hair products were developed. I pull back the collar on the back of my shirt I am wearing to reveal the nape of my neck. I can’t see it, but I can imagine looking here at the line, the overlooked or hidden part and it feels charged. I’ve forgotten the last nape I noticed, when I go out shortly I will pay attention.
The white makeup (oshiroi), suggests beauty and elegance. It represents the spirit of the geisha and illuminates the face in dim lighting. This is not a mask to my mind but something other worldly, it promises to take me somewhere else with only black and red accents of makeup to show expressions. It is thick and does indicate a mask as the hair line is left bare for this purpose. Two shapes of bare skin indicate the wearer’s status and the formality of the occasion – a W-shape is more everyday, for a Maiko or an apprentice, and a V-shape is for more formal or for special occasions usually worn by the more established geisha.
I can’t tell which she is.
She is alone under archive glass in my new home propped up next to some books. I want to believe it’s like a Nan Golding snapshot of real life, post or pre seduction, her pipe, that cigarette you might share with a lover or might light up for yourself to digest the situation or increase the tease or tension.
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Stepping out of the station onto the pavement to wait for my friend I smell the cigarette before I notice him in my peripheral vision. I look to my left.
Much younger than me, I guess mid to late twenties. Arse perching on the window ledge of the Swiss Chalet style railway building - white baggy outsized t-shirt, relaxed cotton fibres a subtle aroma of masculine fragrance, soap and his skin blending around the neck-line. Jeans, faded black, softly shaped to pool about his legs, showing some vague contours, leaving some contours mysterious. And a shaved head, a number 1, I guess. He is looking out to nowhere in particular.
Out of his mouth comes the smoke. It travels up above the pavement, indenting the air and swirls along for a couple of metres before twisting down into my now slightly open wet mouth. I take it down deep into my glossy throat where it burns inside of me. My head spins with the rush. Turning very slowly so that I don’t fall over, the see the smoker drawing the smoke into his mouth. I go with it, into his wet salivary mouth, curling around his smooth enamel teeth and over his rough tongue muscle, slipping about on the skin inside his cheeks and sliding along on his soft palette under the hanging uvula and into his trachea. Further I go deep down into his lungs suspended on either side of his chest, a passenger into his unseen floating world. I filter into all of his alveoli and flow out into his blood stream
As he breathes out a part of him flows up into my nostrils and he travels down inside of me - a fine shredded tobacco scent, held in droplets of moisture spreads itself out and gets lost in my body somewhere.
He doesn’t notice any of this. This is perfectly asymmetrical. There he remains looking into the distance, occasionally at his phone, slumped against the wall, as cool as fuck, looking post or pre fuck.