Two Girls in the snow

A winter scene of two girls outdoors during snowfall, almost certainly shown with oilpaper umbrellas (janome-gasa) and padded winter kimono. Snow subjects in late Meiji woodblock prints rely on the unprinted ground of the [washi](/glossary/washi) paper to read as snow, with [karazuri](/glossary/karazuri) (blind embossing) sometimes used to suggest accumulated drifts. Falling flakes are conventionally rendered as small white reserves against a graded grey sky printed in [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi). The Children tag situates this print within Shuntei's kodomo-e output rather than the urban [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) of his Tokyo Meisho Zue series, though both share the documentary sensibility toward dress and daily life characteristic of his work. Seasonal pairings — summer evenings, snow, boating, embroidery — were a common organizing principle for albums of this kind, and the present sheet appears to belong to such a sequence.