Nagayo Yoshiro sensei zo (Portrait of Nagayo Yoshiro)

Nagayo Yoshiro (1888–1961) was one of the preeminent Japanese novelists of the early Showa period, and Kitaoka's portrait of him belongs to a tradition of artist-author friendship expressed through the gift of a woodblock portrait. The "sensei zo" (portrait of the teacher) framing suggests respect and perhaps personal connection between the two. Kitaoka brings to the portrait his characteristic formal economy: the face rendered in broad planes, the features essentialized into clear geometric form, the personality suggested through the total composition rather than meticulous resemblance.