Woman At an onsen

This print depicts a woman bathing at a hot spring, a subject Maekawa Senpan returned to repeatedly throughout his career. His figure studies carry the directness characteristic of sosaku-hanga practice: Senpan designed, carved, and printed entirely himself, which gave his nudes an intimacy absent from commercially produced shin-hanga. The steam rising from mineral waters likely provided opportunities for soft bokashi gradations, building atmospheric depth through subtly blended tonal transitions across the water surface and background. Senpan's treatment of the bathing figure was notably unselfconscious; he approached the body as a natural subject deserving the same frank attention he gave landscapes and street scenes. This second version of an onsen composition—distinguished by the numeral in its slug—suggests the subject engaged him enough to revisit with a revised composition or palette. Within the sosaku-hanga movement, prints of bathing figures demonstrated that the tradition could incorporate Western figure-drawing conventions while remaining grounded in Japanese technique and sensibility.