大阪南地 富田屋小福

About this photo

In this photo, she carries a doll dressed in a kimono on her back. A dark cord for carrying it runs diagonally across her chest, and the doll, with its bobbed hair, peeks out over her shoulder. An obijime cord passes across the front of her obi (the kimono sash), with a small ornament at its center.

This portrait, captioned "Osaka Nanchi" below the photo, appears in the photo album Kyoto Osaka Imayo Bijin Fuzoku (Beauties of Today in Kyoto and Osaka), published in 1903 (Meiji 36). There are stories that women of the geisha districts set trends in how the obi was tied. The otaiko musubi, still the most typical way of tying an obi, is said to have begun in 1817 (Bunka 14). When the arched Taiko Bridge (Drum Bridge) at Kameido Tenjin Shrine in Edo was rebuilt, the geisha of Fukagawa were invited to be the first to cross it, and they all tied their obi in the same new style. It was a neat way of tying, with the knot hidden inside the obi and the sash shaped into a square "drum" (taiko).

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