Chinese Woman, Hong Kong

This 1917 color woodblock print depicts a Chinese woman in Hong Kong, created during Yamamoto's travels through East Asia. The composition situates the figure within the context of the port city, acknowledging the specific geography of the encounter rather than presenting a generic "Chinese" subject. Yamamoto's color palette responds to the subtropical environment, and the woman's clothing and bearing are rendered with the observational care he applied to all his cross-cultural figure studies. Hong Kong in 1917 was a bustling colonial entrepot where Chinese, British, and Japanese cultures intersected, and Yamamoto's print preserves a moment from that meeting point. The self-carved woodblock technique gives the image an immediacy consistent with travel sketching translated into the permanence of print.