A young woman

A young woman rendered in Asada Benji's figure tradition — the bijin-ga genre brought into the Showa period with the shin-hanga movement's characteristic naturalism. The subject is unnamed and unlocated, suggesting a study of femininity and youth as aesthetic subjects rather than a portrait of a specific individual. His figure work engages the long Japanese tradition of the beautiful woman as art subject while adapting it to the sensibility of the modern era.