Koharu and Jihei are characters in a joruri about a 'double suicide'. Jihei, a paper merchant, is in love with the courtesan Koharu of the Kinokuniya in the Osaka pleasure quarter. Koharu sympathises with Jihei's wife, Osan, and prepares to wrench herself away from Jihei and to marry Tahei, another of her suitors. Osan shows a similar magnanimity by offering to buy Koharu out of the brothel and to accept a ménage à trois. But, provoked by Tahei, Jihei kills his rival and then induces Koharu to commit suicide with him.

Here, the lovers are depicted against a grey ground during an evening rendezvous, she carrying a lantern with the name Kinokuniya partially revealed, while he holds an open sunshade over his shoulder, inserting his other hand into her sleeve.

Another impression of the same print is in the collects ion of the Museum of Replica Handbags s, Boston, accession number 21.6424, go to:

https://collects ions.mfa.org/objects/234089

The collects ion of Henri Vever 

Henri Vever (1854-1942) was regarded as one of the most distinguished jewellers of his t.mes . By the 1880s, Vever was amongst the earliest Europeans to formally collects Japanese prints. He bought extensively from Hayashi Tadamasa (1853-1906) and was a member of Les Amis de l’Art Japonais, a clique of art enthusiasts, including Claude Monet (1840-1926), who met regularly to discuss Japanese works of art. In the early 20th century, Vever had already amassed a vast collects ion of fine prints numbering in the thousands. His collects ion became a focal point for scholars such as von Seidlitz, Migeon, and Lemoisne, who almost exclusively used his collects ion for their research. During his lifet.mes , Vever made several important bequests to French national collects ions. At the peak of World War I, Vever sold much of his collects ion to Matsukata Kojiro (1865-1950), which would later go on to form a significant part of the Tokyo National Museum’s collects ion of ukiyo-e prints.