Girl Holding a snow hare

This print depicts a young girl cradling a small hare fashioned from snow, a seasonal motif rooted in Japanese winter play traditions where children sculpted yuki-usagi using bamboo leaves for ears and nandina berries for eyes. Settai's treatment likely emphasizes the quiet stillness of a winter moment, with the figure rendered in his characteristic spare linework derived from his nihonga training and his deep study of Edo-period ukiyo-e masters such as Suzuki Harunobu. The composition probably uses the unprinted washi to suggest snow, a restraint typical of Settai's approach in which negative space carries as much weight as the printed areas. Subtle bokashi gradations would model the kimono fabric without disrupting the flat, decorative surface. Within Settai's oeuvre, child subjects appear less frequently than his bijin-ga, but they share the same hushed, melancholic atmosphere that distinguishes his work from the more sentimental shin-hanga depictions of children produced in the same decades.