New Year Decoration with Cocoon-Shaped Cakes

This 1941 colour woodblock print of an Akita New Year (oshōgatsu) decoration depicts the seasonal mayudama display — a branch of willow or other tree hung with small white and pink cocoon-shaped (mayu) rice cakes representing the silkworm cocoons whose successful cultivation was traditionally prayed for at the New Year in silk-producing regions of Japan. The composition shows the bare branches of the seasonal display weighted with rounded cakes against a darker interior backdrop, recording one of the more distinctive New Year customs of the Akita countryside. Produced in Katsuhira Tokushi's strict jiga-jikoku-jizuri procedure as a sōsaku-hanga printmaker, the print is an example of the artist's broader documentary project of recording the seasonal customs of his native prefecture in colour woodblock. The mayudama display has now largely disappeared as silk production has receded from the Tōhoku rural economy, giving the print additional value as a historical document of an Akita custom of the early Shōwa era.