Bijin juni so

Bijin juni so (Twelve Aspects of Beautiful Women) is the running series title that Migita Toshihide used to organise his calendar of feminine subjects across the twelve lunar months. This impression, held by the British Museum and accessible through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org, belongs within that series even where the individual month is not specified on the catalogue label. As a Yoshitoshi student, Toshihide carried into Meiji prints of women a careful, observational drawing style that avoided the wilder mannerisms of some of his Tokyo contemporaries, and the resulting series sat comfortably alongside parallel bijinga sequences by Chikanobu and others. The format is vertical, the ground is spare, and the design depends on the woman's pose, kimono pattern, hair ornament and obi to do the seasonal work. The series demonstrates how a designer best known for senso-e could maintain a separate, steady line of bijinga production for the same publishers, and how Meiji women's prints adapted late-Edo conventions to the costume and grooming of the 1890s. The British Museum's open catalogue allows the series to be reconstructed sheet by sheet, even where individual impressions are catalogued without a specific month label. The work belongs to the body of Toshihide's bijinga that complements his better-known war reportage and his historical subjects, and it indicates the breadth required of working Meiji print designers.