Woman combing her hair

Kamisuki, completed in 1920, depicts a woman seated with her long black hair released from its usual upswept arrangement and combed forward over one shoulder. The model is generally identified as Tomi, a young woman Goyo employed across several late prints. The composition centers on the rendering of the hair itself: each strand is articulated through fine carving and successive impressions, producing a layered black that resists the flatness common to less elaborately printed mokuhanga. Goyo paired this technical demand with the white of the woman's exposed neck and upper back, the patterned fabric of her open kimono, and a pale ground that isolates the figure. The print belongs to the small body of work he completed under personal supervision of carvers and printers in the years before his death, issued in restricted editions. Within his oeuvre it sits alongside Woman in a Long Undergarment and Woman after a Bath as a study of private grooming, presenting a modern subject with structural conventions inherited from late Edo bijin-ga while replacing decorative idealization with sustained anatomical observation.