Combing His Hair- repro

Combing His Hair by Keisai Eisen, surviving in a reproduction documented on [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org, belongs to the artist's contributions to the [shunga](/glossary/shunga) tradition listed under the series 12 Shunga. The image depicts the intimate act of hair grooming, a recurring motif in both [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) and shunga that signals the close, often eroticized domesticity of the bedchamber or dressing room. The combing of long hair in particular was used in late Edo ukiyo-e as a visual device that combined sensuality, fashion, and the slow rituals of personal care. Eisen's reputation as a designer of bijin-ga gave him a natural facility with such subjects, and his shunga work draws on the same compositional discipline: the careful direction of hairlines, the patterned weight of clothing partially set aside, and the small details of comb, mirror, and tray that anchor the figures to a recognizable domestic interior. As a 'repro,' or reproduction, the sheet likely represents a later impression of an earlier Eisen design, made for the lively late-nineteenth or early-twentieth-century market in Japanese erotic prints. Many such impressions have come down through the ukiyo-e.org catalogue rather than through museum acquisition. The entry preserves title and series association while leaving publisher and date undocumented. The sheet records Eisen's continuing presence in the shunga market and his ability to apply the visual language of late Edo ukiyo-e to the most intimate registers of contemporary life.