Kisaragi 如月 / Bijin juni sugata 美人十二姿

Kisaragi, the second lunar month, falls in late winter and earliest spring, and Migita Toshihide takes that liminal seasonal placement as a cue for the textiles and hair ornaments shown in this sheet from Bijin juni sugata (Twelve Aspects of Beautiful Women). The series, distributed across institutional holdings including the British Museum, was reproduced on ukiyo-e.org and remains the most legible bijinga programme of Toshihide's career. As a Yoshitoshi student, he applied to Meiji prints of women a careful, observational drawing style that paralleled the bijinga of Chikanobu and other Tokyo contemporaries. The vertical format, the spare ground and the meticulous attention to kimono pattern, obi knot and ornament are all part of the series' shared visual programme, and the Kisaragi sheet typically features plum blossom or early-spring motifs that mark the transition from winter into the year's first floral signals. The series demonstrates the range that a working Meiji designer needed to maintain. Toshihide's primary public reputation came from his senso-e of the 1894-1895 and 1904-1905 wars, but bijinga sequences of this kind supplied the steady commercial work that kept publishers loyal between campaigns. Within his oeuvre, Bijin juni sugata represents a coherent and accessible body of bijinga that can be reconstructed sheet by sheet through open museum collections.