Women Holding Boy who is Reaching Out to Young Man Below

Women Holding Boy who is Reaching Out to Young Man Below, circa 1776, is a hashira-e (pillar-print) color woodblock print at the Art Institute of Chicago. The composition compresses an entire domestic narrative scene into the tall, narrow hashira-e format: women on a balcony or veranda hold up a small boy who is reaching down toward a young man passing below. The print belongs to the family of intimate genre vignettes that flourished in mid-1770s bijin-ga, in which the floating-world print broadened beyond pure portraiture to depict everyday tenderness and small social interactions among women, children, and male visitors. The hashira-e format, designed for vertical installation on Japanese household pillars, was a Shigemasa specialty in this period. The c. 1776 date places the print contemporary with the great Seiro Bijin Awase Sugata Kagami album he produced with Shunsho, and the figural conventions visible here - tall, dignified women - belong to the same mature bijin-ga style. The Art Institute of Chicago's impression is an excellent example of Shigemasa's contribution to the hashira-e tradition.