Shamisen

This Japanese woodblock print by Hodo Nishimura, 'Shamisen,' is recorded in the Saito Hodo No Series through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org's aggregation of the Japanese Art Open Database. The shamisen is a three-stringed plucked instrument introduced to Japan from the Ryukyu Islands in the sixteenth century and rapidly absorbed into the soundworld of urban entertainment districts. By the Edo period it had become the defining instrument of geisha performance, kabuki theater music, and various popular vocal genres including nagauta and jiuta. [Shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) artists routinely depicted women with shamisen because the instrument condensed a whole set of cultural associations, refined accomplishment, the pleasure quarters of Kyoto and Tokyo, and the persistence of premodern arts into the modern era. Nishimura's treatment of the subject fits squarely within the shin-hanga conventions established by predecessors such as Hashiguchi Goyo and Ito Shinsui: a single figure rendered with clear keylines and modulated coloring, the kimono pattern carefully registered across multiple blocks, the instrument itself given enough detail to be recognizable without dominating the composition. Such Japanese woodblock prints functioned as both decorative objects and ethnographic souvenirs for collectors abroad, who often understood them as evidence of an unchanging traditional culture even as the figures and settings were the product of contemporary commercial publishing. The Saito Hodo No Series provenance attaches the print to a documented body of Nishimura's authorized work and supports its identification within institutional and private holdings.