Early Spring — 昭和美人風俗 浅春

The full Japanese title 昭和美人風俗 浅春 ("Showa Customs of Beauties: Early Spring") places this undated bijin-ga within a larger series documenting the life and manners of beautiful women in the Showa period. The subject—a woman in the tenuous warmth of early spring, perhaps at a window or in a garden where the first green shoots appear—carries the bittersweet quality of the Japanese word "asaharu" (early spring), which evokes both the pleasure of winter's end and the awareness of how brief the season will be. Bokashi gradations build the pale, tentative warmth of the season.