Five Figures of Modern Beauties: Playing Battledore and Shuttlecock (Gendai Bijin Fuzoku Gotai: Oibane [hagoita?])

A single young woman is shown in half-length profile against a solid pink ground, her dark hair swept up and pinned with a white flower ornament. She wears a kimono patterned with red and white plum blossoms, her head tilted back and lips slightly parted as she raises one arm overhead, gripping the dark paddle-like form of a battledore that extends off the top edge of the composition. The palette is limited to soft pink, black, white, and red, giving the image a flat, graphic quality typical of the print's mid-20th-century woodblock technique. Shimura Tatsumi, 1953; from the series *Five Figures of Modern Beauties: Playing Battledore and Shuttlecock*.