Woman burning incense

This sheet portrays a woman engaged in the act of burning incense, a quiet domestic and ritual subject with deep roots in Japanese visual culture, from classical narrative scrolls through Edo-period bijin-ga. In a twentieth-century mokuhanga treatment, the scene typically centers on the figure's lowered gaze, the angle of the hands, and the thread of smoke rising from the koro, with the printmaker using bokashi to render the diffuse smoke against a more solid background tone. The composition rewards restraint: a limited palette, careful registration of overprinted color blocks, and washi that allows subtle tonal layering. Takasawa Keiichi appears to have returned to this motif more than once, with at least two prints sharing the title, suggesting a sustained interest in the gesture as a vehicle for studying posture, fabric, and atmosphere within a single repeated subject.