Onsen Bath

Onsen Bath continues Maekawa Senpan's extended exploration of Japan's hot-spring bathing culture, a subject he treated more frequently than perhaps any other sosaku-hanga artist of his generation. The print likely shows one or more figures within the timber-framed interior of a traditional bathhouse, with steam, wooden tubs, and tiled or stone bathing platforms suggested through economical means. Senpan's interest in onsen settings extended beyond the figures themselves to the architecture and atmosphere of the bath chamber, which he rendered through flat tonal areas and careful baren-applied gradations on washi. As with his other bathing prints, the work reflects an unguarded, observational attitude toward the body in a relaxed setting. Self-cut and self-printed in the sosaku-hanga manner, the print carries the modest scale and intimate touch that distinguished Senpan's work from the more polished, publisher-produced shin-hanga onsen images circulating in the same period.