Moga (Modern) Girl

A young woman embodying the "moga" or modern girl phenomenon of 1930s Japan appears in this oban woodblock print from around 1930. The moga represented a radical break with traditional femininity: bobbed hair, Western clothing, independence, and participation in urban consumer culture. Komura Settai, whose bijin-ga typically drew on classical models of female beauty, here engages directly with contemporary life, documenting a social type that fascinated and alarmed Japanese society in equal measure. The print captures the moga's confident self-presentation, her modern dress and posture signaling membership in an international culture of youth and modernity. Settai's elegant line work gives the figure both fashionable sharpness and the timeless grace of his classical training.