Hanga
Woman Seated in front of a mirror by Kishio Koizumi — Japanese Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)

Woman Seated in front of a mirror

by Kishio Koizumi

Medium:
Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
Image courtesy of
Saru Gallery

Description

This print departs from Koizumi's primary subject matter of Tokyo landscapes and architecture, entering the bijin-ga tradition of depicting women at private moments. The mirror motif, established in ukiyo-e since Utamaro's mid-1790s bust portraits, allows the print to present its sitter from two angles — the back of the head and the reflected face — within a single composition. Koizumi's Western painting training would inform the figure's anatomical handling and the modeling of the mirror's volume, setting the work apart from the flatter conventions of earlier bijin-ga. As with his architectural subjects, every block was carved and printed by the artist himself, consistent with his sosaku-hanga commitment to single-author production. The print likely sits outside the One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo series, representing the broader range of figure subjects Koizumi pursued alongside his topographic work. The mirror scene thus shows a printmaker fluent in ukiyo-e's classical genres while applying his own carving and printing methods to compose them anew.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Woman Seated in front of a mirror was created by Kishio Koizumi (小泉癸巳男).