Arranging the hair

Arranging the Hair depicts a woman at her toilette, attending to her coiffure in the quiet moment of dressing — a recurring subject in [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) that allowed [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) artists to display the carver's facility with the fine parallel lines of black hair against the pale ground of the neck and shoulders. Hirano's treatment of such intimate domestic subjects typically relies on a restrained palette and clean contour lines drawn from his nihonga training, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation employed sparingly in the background or on the kimono to suggest atmosphere without competing with the figure. The print would have been issued through Watanabe Shozaburo's workshop using [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) techniques on [washi](/glossary/washi), with the hair block requiring particular precision from the carver to register the individual strands lifted by the woman's hand or comb. Within Hirano's output, hair-arranging compositions sit alongside his mirror scenes and seasonal figures as part of a broader engagement with the private rituals of women's daily life, a thematic territory shared with Ito Shinsui and Torii Kotondo but handled by Hirano with a slightly cooler psychological register.