Hand Mirror

A woman holding a hand mirror — one of the most psychologically rich subjects in Goyo's bijin-ga, the mirror introducing a doubling: we see the woman's face and simultaneously imagine its reflection, the image within the image. The hand mirror (kagami) had a long history in Japanese feminine iconography, associated with the sun goddess Amaterasu and with feminine self-knowledge, and Goyo's rendering of a woman examining her own face in a mirror carries these associations while remaining firmly grounded in the physical reality of the specific woman depicted.