Complete set of 12 chuban prints

This refers to Kobayakawa's series Kindai Jisei Sho Fuzoku (Modern Styles of Modern Women), issued in chuban format — the smaller, intimate size below oban. The complete twelve-print set documents women in characteristic moments of contemporary urban life: smoking, applying lipstick, telephoning, drinking, attending entertainments. Watanabe Shozaburo published the series in the early 1930s, and the chuban format suited the diaristic, observational mode, with each sheet functioning as a glimpse rather than a grand statement. The smaller scale also permitted experiments with composition and color that the more formal oban portraits could not accommodate. Acquiring a complete set is uncommon, since individual sheets circulated separately for decades. Together the twelve prints constitute Kobayakawa's most sustained engagement with the moga as social type, and stand among the principal documents of how shin-hanga responded to the modernity of Showa-era Tokyo, where Edo-derived conventions of feminine representation met cosmopolitan dress, leisure, and self-presentation.