Nude in Onsen

A large monochrome woodblock of a nude bather composed in the long horizontal proportions of a hanging-scroll figure study, executed in Asai Kiyoshi's mature post-war black-and-white manner. The sheet measures roughly 75 by 60 centimetres, an unusually generous format for a sōsaku-hanga single-figure subject and one that allows Asai to bring his Western-style (yōga) drawing training under Saitō Yori and Nakazawa Hiromitsu directly to the surface: the body is described with a continuous calligraphic outline that reads as much as life drawing as it does as a print, with the volumes of the figure modelled by small parallel cuts in the block rather than by tonal areas. The composition reaches back to the bijin-ga tradition of the bath scene — a subject central to shin-hanga and Shōwa-period bijin imagery — but strips it of decorative shin-hanga colour, leaving only the figure, a few inked notations of the bath edge, and a deep black ground that throws the body forward. The impression, signed with a red 'Kiyoshi' seal at the lower right, was de-accessioned from the Nerima Art Museum, Tokyo, and is described in the gallery record as fine and very rare; the few small holes and remains of a previous backing testify to a museum mounting history. It is among the most accessible single-sheet examples of Asai's later figure work.