Bathing boys

Bathing boys depicts a genre subject — children at water — that connects to a longer tradition of seasonal figure prints associated with summer leisure. Within Kamei's body of work, this subject moves outside the meisho-e (famous places) landscape format that dominated shin-hanga commercial production and into figural genre territory more often handled by ukiyo-e specialists than by his generation of landscape designers. The numbered title suggesting it is the second in a paired set indicates a sustained compositional study of the same subject, possibly varying viewpoint, group arrangement, or setting between prints. Mokuhanga handles water through carved patterning in the keyblock combined with bokashi gradation in the printing, while figures require separate blocks for skin tones, hair, and any clothing or wraps. Kamei's print likely frames the children within a partial landscape setting — riverbank, pool, or coastal shallows — that situates the figural action within the kind of natural environment his landscape practice would have made familiar territory. The work represents the broader thematic range of mid-century shin-hanga production, where individual artists pursued figure and genre subjects alongside the publisher-driven landscape commissions.