Five figures of modern beauties

Multi-figure compositions of beauties have a long lineage in Japanese print history, from Utamaro's groupings of teahouse women to Kiyokata's portraits of literary types. The title indicates an ensemble of five women, likely arrayed across a single sheet or treated as a closely related series. The 'modern' designation suggests women in postwar dress — kimono with updated patterns, possibly contemporary hairstyles, set within current rather than historical contexts. Mokuhanga is well suited to orchestrating multiple kimono patterns: each figure's textile is printed from its own set of colour blocks, allowing the women to read as visually distinct while remaining harmonised across the composition. The print extends Shimura's preoccupation with female elegance, here exchanged from a single contemplative subject to a wider survey of the types and moods that defined his vision of postwar Japanese womanhood.