Print 05 from the series Streaked Mist (Yae gasumi)

Print 05 from the series Streaked Mist (Yae gasumi 八重霞), dated 1906 and held by the Honolulu Museum of Art (Richard Lane Collection), is one of the middle sheets in Ikeda Shōen's twelve-print color woodblock album published by Kokkeidō (Akiyama Buemon) in late-Meiji Tokyo. Each plate in the series presents a single woman in seasonal costume, set against minimal background — the cycle moves through the Japanese year from spring rain through autumn maples and winter quiet — and Shōen uses each composition to develop the kind of refined feminine type that her teacher Mizuno Toshikata (1866-1908) had instructed her to render with attention to spirit and elegance rather than mere surface beauty. Like its companion plates, the print uses the oban yoko-e format of about 9 5/8 by 14 5/8 inches (24.6 by 37.2 centimeters) and exploits the full technical resources of high-end Tokyo color printing: multiple block registrations, soft graded washes (bokashi), lacquer-printed (urushi-zuri) ink in deep blacks for hair, sash, and collar, and silver mica overlays on hair ornaments. The Streaked Mist album is among the most important documents of Shōen's commercial print career and circulated widely among Tokyo collectors before her early death in 1917; the Honolulu Museum of Art's full set is a key resource for studying late-Meiji bijin-ga print practice and the transitional moment between Edo-period nishiki-e and modern Taishō nihonga prints.