Beauty Playing a Shamisen second quarter of the 17th century Japan At one time part of a larger composition, perhaps of outdoor merrymaking, this image of a woman plucking a samisen captures the pathos that underlies a scene of pleasure. The three-stringed lute, adapted from an instrument imported from the Ryūkū Islands in the mid-sixteenth century, was associated with the Edo-period world of pleasure quarters and theater. Although the work is badly damaged, the delicate drawingespecially the hands, face, and hairadmirably conveys emotion and character. Both the drawing and the style of the hair and robe point to the second quarter of the seventeenth century, when entertainers were portrayed in genre scenes, prior to the emergence of isolated images of beauties in the late seventeenth century.. Beauty Playing a Shamisen 45094