Untitled (hiyoshi-mamoru)

A sixth untitled work by Hiyoshi Mamoru. His documentary subjects — the farming communities caught in sudden showers, the riverside washerwomen, the market sellers and their customers, the craftsmen at traditional occupations — compose a picture of mid-Showa Japanese and Korean life that is valuable both as genre art and as social history. The woodblock medium's precision of rendering and stability of preservation make these prints particularly useful as historical documents.