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Portrait of Princess Hosokawa Ko, 1826
By Kano Ikei Hironobu
Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
Hanging scroll, ink and colors on silk
Eisei-Bunko Museum, 3344
© Eisei Bunko, Japan.

One of six daughters of the lord Hosokawa Narishige, the little Princess Ko was
a child of a late second marriage; she was adopted by Narishige’s oldest son,
Naritatsu. Ko died when she was only three years old; the whole family grieved to
lose her, and her adoptive father, devastated by her death, commissioned a number
of memorial portraits of Ko to hang in temples under Hosokawa patronage.

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