Young Woman with Fan (Descriptive Title)

Dated circa 1910, Young Woman with Fan is an oban woodblock print depicting a woman holding a folding fan, one of the most versatile props in the bijin-ga repertoire. Fans in Japanese art serve simultaneously as practical objects, fashion accessories, and communicative tools whose angle, degree of opening, and manner of holding can convey a range of social signals and emotions. Kaburaki Kiyokata uses the fan to animate his subject's pose and to reveal something about her character through how she holds it: close to the face suggests coyness or heat, extended at arm's length suggests display, and folded against the lap suggests repose. The circa 1910 dating places the portrait in the late Meiji period, and the descriptive title in parentheses indicates this may be a cataloger's identification rather than Kaburaki's original name for the work.