Kumadori Frontal view

The companion piece to the side-view sheet, this print presents the same saru (monkey) kumadori head-on, the symmetrical orientation in which kabuki actors traditionally display the completed makeup before the audience in the mie pose. Frontal kumadori studies foreground the bilateral patterning that side views obscure: the mirrored arcs over each brow, the ring around the mouth, and the way pigment is drawn outward from the centerline of the face. Printed as mokuhanga, the work depends on precise registration via kentō marks so that the colored linework aligns cleanly against the white ground, with the [baren](/glossary/baren) producing the even, flat fields of color characteristic of theatrical subjects. Treating kumadori as a paired set — profile and frontal — situates the print within a documentary or study-like mode, related to actor-print ([yakusha-e](/glossary/yakusha-e)) traditions but stripped of the surrounding figure and stage. As with the rest of Takahashi Hiromitsu's output, attribution to a specific period or workshop awaits further research in Japanese-language sources.