Light Snow, Customs of Young Women: Beauty of the Fifteenth Year of Meiji [1882] (Meiji Jugonen Koro no Fuzoku)

Dated 1925, this oban woodblock print combines a snow scene with a portrait of a young woman dressed in the fashion of 1882, the fifteenth year of the Meiji era. Kaburaki Kiyokata specialized in depicting women from specific historical periods, using costume, hairstyle, and accessories as precise markers of time and social status. The 1882 setting places the woman in an era when Western and Japanese dress were coexisting and competing in the capital, and the light snowfall adds seasonal atmosphere to the period portrait. The print's full title references customs of young women, framing the image as a study of how a particular generation presented itself. Kaburaki's 1925 audience would have viewed the 1882 fashions with a nostalgic awareness of how much had changed in the intervening four decades.