Children Playing
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
Key value factors: As self-carved and self-printed works, sosaku-hanga value is tied to the artist's reputation and edition size. Larger formats, earlier editions, and historically significant works command the highest prices.
A composition depicting children at play — a subject with deep roots in Japanese genre painting from the Edo period, when images of children engaged in seasonal games and everyday activities formed an important part of the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) tradition. Hiyoshi Mamoru's treatment of playing children brings his social-documentary sensibility to a subject also treated in the [Shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) period as an emblem of the timeless pleasures of childhood. His children are embedded in specific settings — the farmyard, the village street, the domestic garden — that ground their play in a particular social and physical world, giving the composition documentary weight alongside its celebratory warmth.
Children Playing was created by Hiyoshi Mamoru (日吉護).
Children Playing depicts music, children, and daily life.
