Woman in pink kimono doing her hair

Woman in Pink Kimono Doing Her Hair is a Taisho-era woodblock that falls within the bijin-ga tradition while carrying the personal stamp of sosaku-hanga production. The woman is engaged in the private act of arranging her hair, an activity that reveals the labor behind the polished appearance of formal coiffure. Tobari carves and prints the pink of the kimono himself, the color warm against the dark mass of hair being gathered and pinned. The domestic intimacy of the scene, a woman at her grooming rather than posed for display, gives the print a candor that more formal beauty portraits deliberately avoid.