Seated woman

A figure study of a woman in a seated pose, this print continues Kawanishi's interest in the modern people of Kobe rather than the courtesans, geisha, and onnagata of classical [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga). [Sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists frequently used the seated figure to test the medium's capacity for portraiture: a fixed, contained pose lends itself to the flat colour areas and clear contour that hand-carved blocks favour. Kawanishi's treatment likely emphasizes the geometry of the body — the triangle of folded legs or the rectangle of the torso — and dresses the figure in patterned cloth that allows decorative passages of carved texture. Compared to the highly finished, multi-block bijin-ga of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the print's economy of means is conspicuous: fewer impressions, fewer registrations, and the visible grain of the woodblock remain part of the finished image, in keeping with sosaku-hanga's emphasis on the artist's hand.