Clock and a Beauty (I)

A woman poses beside a Western-style mantel clock in this 1964 bijin-ga—the first of what appears to be a series pairing traditional feminine beauty with the modern Western timepiece. The "Clock and a Beauty" compositions represent Shinsui's late-career meditation on the juxtaposition of Japanese feminine ideal and Western modernity, a tension that had defined Japanese cultural life for a century. The specificity of the object—not just "clock" but a particular style—anchors the woman in a specific moment of postwar Japanese domestic culture.