Old and new fashion, Taishô and Shôwa

A pair-image print explicitly comparing two periods of female dress, Taisho (1912–1926) and Showa (1926–1989), giving Shinsui a structural device for staging his subject against historical change. Typical arrangements place the two figures side by side or in mirrored postures, permitting direct comparison of hair, kimono pattern, obi tie, and accessory while keeping the underlying facial type essentially constant. Such period-comparison prints reflect a documentary impulse within [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga): Shinsui registers the visible markers of contemporary life—the shift from Taisho-era hair ornaments and obi styles to the modified silhouettes of early Showa—without editorializing on them. The print situates Shinsui as both heir to the costume specificity of Edo-period bijin-ga, where dress carried social and seasonal information, and as a chronicler of his own period's evolving conventions of femininity, a dual role characteristic of the shin-hanga generation.