Frontispiece Print (Kuchi-e) for a Literary Magazine

A woman in a pale purple kimono lies collapsed backward in a snowy garden, her head thrown back and a streak of blood running from her forehead down her neck; a revolver rests on the ground near her outstretched hand. Beside her, snow-covered pine boughs and a stone lantern frame the scene, and above her, set within a red circular inset, two mustached men in Western dress lean close together in conversation. This polychrome woodblock kuchi-e frontispiece by Kobori Tomone, made in 1906 for a literary magazine, is rendered in muted grays and blues against the pink of the kimono and the red of the inset roundel.