One Hundred Women Classified According to their Rank

In this handscroll, Nishikawa Sukenobu depicted women of varying vocations and ranks in their daily dress. Beginning with an empress and her servants, his book offers a glimpse into the range of roles women played in Edo-period Japan. Throughout the handscroll, he shows women employing literacy in their work: a poet composes a poem; a doctor measures out medication doses while consulting a book; a scribe holds her brush at the ready. This work is a rare example of how the content of printed books could circulate: this work consists of pages from a printed book, which were hand copied and bound as a book, that was then remounted as a handscroll. The practice of copying books by hand was a way for readers who could not, for some reason, obtain the printed original. Hand-copied versions of texts are more common, while hand-copied illustrated books, such as the pages in this handscroll, are relatively uncommon. A note at the end of the handscroll indicates that the copying was done in 1729, six years after the publication of the original book.