Paris back window

This second "Paris back window" composition revisits the motif of an interior framed view of a Parisian rear courtyard, almost certainly drawn from one of Kitaoka's European residencies — beginning with his 1953–54 stay on a French government grant, and continued during later extended periods abroad. Multiple compositions on a single subject were a familiar working method in [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), where the artist controlled every stage of production and could revisit a scene through alternative framings, recut blocks, or modified palettes. The window-frame device combines an intimate domestic foreground with the broader Haussmann-era rooftop topography of zinc chimneys, mansard slopes, and inner cours intérieures. Kitaoka likely employed [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to suggest the muted northern light characteristic of Paris and the soft tonal shifts across the slate rooftops, working in the jiga, jikoku, jizuri tradition of the movement. The print belongs to the European group within his oeuvre, distinct from his immediate postwar repatriation scenes and his later abstract Japanese landscapes, and reflects the postwar generation's treatment of foreign cities as proper subjects for mokuhanga.