Shojikimono, an Honest Woman, from the series Instructions from a Parent's Spectacles

This print is from a series of beauty pictures that each show a type of woman who represented various moral failings. The spectacles symbolize the parent’s, and by extension the viewer’s, observation and edification. The text above—we are to understand it was composed by Utamaro, who marketed himself as a great connoisseur of women—takes a mocking tone, criticizing the woman here, who ties on a good-luck charm, for her superstitious beliefs.

“To take seriously each and every phoney incantation anyone tells you is meddling in the affairs of the Gods, which will only get worse as the days pass. People should realize that they are being stupid and courting disaster. The Gods and Buddhas are distant and aloof—not to be approached and profaned. To spend all your efforts on diviners, fortune-telling and votive abstinence may be all very well and even seem charming; yet this too is a [kind of] disease, best avoided. If something is bothering you, you should pray for purification with [an auspicious saying such as] ‘crane and tortoise, pine and bamboo.’ Incantations should be confined to the special holy day [of the Buddha’s Birthday] …”

—Translation by Timothy Clark