Dance fan

Dance fan focuses on the mai-ogi, the folding fan used in traditional Japanese dance forms such as Nihon buyo and the kabuki and kyoge dance pieces. The print likely depicts either a fan as an isolated object — its painted decoration rendered across the open ribs — or a dancer holding the fan in one of the canonical positions central to choreographed performance. Shin-hanga prints of fans frequently exploit the irregular silhouette of the open ogi as a compositional device, with the painted fan-face becoming a print-within-a-print whose decoration may include seasonal flowers, calligraphy, or auspicious motifs. The carver registers the radiating ribs as fine parallel lines, while the printer typically uses bokashi along the upper edge of the fan to suggest depth. For Kato Shinmei, who worked across landscape and figure subjects, the fan motif sits within the broader shin-hanga interest in objects of traditional Japanese material culture, treated with the precise woodblock craftsmanship the movement's publisher-led system supported.