Osen of the Kagiya serving tea in front of Kasamori Shrine

Collector’s seal: Edwin and Marjorie GrabhornAt an outdoor teahouse (mizujaya) near the gate of a shrine, a lithe young woman serves tea to a man resting on a wide bench. With one sandal casually kicked off, he holds a pipe in his hand as he gazes at her. His head is sheathed in a wide black hood (zukin), presumably of lined silk crepe—a style that was especially popular in the 1700s among samurai from Kyoto and Osaka when visiting the pleasure quarters in Edo. He indeed wears the double swords of a warrior-class man, though the natty vertical stripes are more closely associated with fashionable commoners. Next to the man lies a smoking box containing a small brazier and cylindrical bamboo ashtray; but his main interest is his server — the famed beauty Osen (1751–1857), who worked at the Kagiya teahouse outside the Kasamori Inari Shrine in present-day Taninaka, Taito-ku, Tokyo.