Face

A close study of a single face — head and shoulders rather than a full figure or scene. Tight portrait framing of this kind sits at some remove from the standard shin-hanga vocabulary of landscape and bijin-ga full-figure compositions, and signals an interest in graphic design and modernist portraiture more associated with the sōsaku-hanga circles working in the same period. Technically, a print of this type would typically use a small number of color blocks, with the keyblock carrying most of the descriptive weight: contours of the eyes, mouth, and hairline. Bokashi gradation might appear across the cheek or in the background to model volume without recourse to Western shadow conventions. Within Kamei's body of work, which was largely organized around landscape and view prints in the shin-hanga manner, a sheet titled simply Face represents the quieter portrait register of his output and reflects the cross-pollination between shin-hanga and sōsaku-hanga practice in mid-century Japanese print production.