Nude woman — 裸婦

Keiichi Takasawa's Rafu (裸婦, Nude Woman) is a figurative woodblock print depicting the female nude, a subject that gained prominence in Japanese printmaking during the Taisho and Showa periods under the influence of Western academic figure drawing and the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) movement's embrace of personal and modern subject matter. Working in the sosaku-hanga tradition, Takasawa would have designed and printed the work himself, translating the drawn figure directly into carved line and relief printing without the mediation of specialist carvers. The nude figure in woodblock printing required adaptation of the medium's characteristic techniques: gouged contour lines convey volume and outline, while hatching or relief tone describe the body's surface differently from the graduated washes of nihonga painting. The composition likely positions the figure against a minimal ground, concentrating formal attention on the modeling of the human form. The rafu subject has established precedents in Japanese modernist printmaking through artists including Onchi Koshiro and Maekawa Senpan.