Unknown, Woman 2

An unidentified female figure—suggesting this may be one of Saito's portrait subjects from Akita or the Tohoku region, areas he visited extensively in the 1940s and 1950s. His portraits of northern women carry a different quality than his Kyoto subjects: broader bone structure, heavier garments, a more weathered stillness. The flat planes of the sosaku-hanga medium suited his determination to find a universal human form beneath regional particularity.