Girl with western hat

A girl in a Western hat — the combination of traditional Japanese dress or features with the borrowed clothing of Western fashion that became a subject of considerable interest to early Showa-era artists documenting Japan's cultural transitions — is depicted in Maeda Masao's direct graphic style. The Western hat on a Japanese child created a compositional and cultural contrast that artists of the interwar period treated with varying degrees of irony, nostalgia, and celebration of modernity. Maeda's treatment is likely characterized by straightforward observation rather than cultural commentary.