Returning from a Bath — 湯がへり

"Returning from a Bath — 湯がへり" places a female figure in the quintessential bijin-ga subject of post-bath return — the walk from the communal or household bath that was, in traditional Japanese homes, a separate structure from the main residence. The Japanese title's intimacy (using the character for "hot water return") grounds the scene in a specific domestic practice while the composition treats the figure with Onchi's characteristic formal attentiveness. The subject represents his engagement with the bijin genre tradition filtered through his own formal priorities.