Chatting Over Tea — 茶ばなし

"Chatting Over Tea" (茶ばなし, chabana shi) depicts the social ritual of tea-time conversation between women — the informal gathering around tea that was one of the most characteristic forms of female social interaction in Meiji domestic life. Shuntei renders the specific quality of this social occasion: the arrangement of figures around the tea service, the relaxed and intimate postures of women at ease with each other, the combination of the practical activity of tea drinking with the social pleasure of conversation. This quintessentially domestic subject was one of his most successful genre compositions.