Bijin and Maple Leaves (1)

Bijin and Maple Leaves, the first in a series, places a beautiful woman within the autumn foliage that Japanese aesthetic tradition consistently treats as the season most resonant with human feeling. Maple leaves (momiji) in their crimson and gold autumn colors have been paired with feminine beauty in Japanese art since the Heian period, the transient brilliance of the leaves rhyming with the transient beauty of the woman. Hanko renders this established pairing with the psychological subtlety and compositional refinement that distinguish his bijin-ga.