Solitude - A Model from Akita

Solitude - A Model from Akita (1947) shows Saito in the immediate postwar period working with a figure from the Akita region of northern Honshu—an area known for its famously pale-skinned women whose beauty was celebrated in Edo-period poetry. The Akita woman as subject carries a specific regional identity, the long winters and isolated communities of the Tohoku north producing a particular human type distinct from the cosmopolitan subjects of Tokyo or the traditional beauties of Kyoto.