Self-Portrait: At the time of Repatriation Manchukuo

Kitaoka was repatriated from Manchukuo in 1947, and this self-portrait made at the time of repatriation records a specific historical and personal moment: the artist looking at himself in the context of mass displacement, his individual identity intact within a collective experience. Self-portraiture in woodblock requires a particular self-confrontation — the artist translating their own face into the medium's terms — and Kitaoka's version brings to this ancient artistic task the directness of someone who has seen too much to soften what the mirror shows.