The Mistress Okichi

A woman with elaborately dressed black hair, secured with a tortoiseshell comb and pale pink ornaments, is shown in half-length, her bare shoulders wrapped in a blue-and-white patterned robe worn loosely off one shoulder while she plays a shamisen. Her face is powdered pale with faint red lips, and she gazes downward toward the instrument in her hands. Behind her stretches a pale blue sea and sky, with a multi-masted steam-sail warship and a small white sailboat near a distant tree-lined coastline; the title cartouche and artist's seals appear in the upper left and lower right corners. Kobayakawa Kiyoshi, "The Mistress Okichi," 1932, Japanese color woodblock print on handmade paper.