Marumage hairstyle

This second Marumage hairstyle continues Shimura Tatsumi's interest in the marumage, the rounded chignon historically worn by married women, treated here as a subject in its own right. As a variant of the print of the same title, it likely offers an alternative angle, expression, or kimono pattern, allowing the artist to study the hairstyle under different conditions of light and posture. The marumage demands precise keyblock carving — its silhouette must be read as a single continuous contour, with kanzashi ornaments registered cleanly against the black ground of the hair. Shimura's training under Yamakawa Shuho, in the Kaburagi Kiyokata lineage, equipped him to render such conventions with restraint, avoiding the mannered exaggerations of late-Edo bijin-ga. The print sits within the postwar continuation of shin-hanga aesthetics, where collaboration between artist, carver, and printer produced impressions on washi using bokashi for the kimono ground and flat sumi for the hair, foregrounding the descriptive economy of the woodblock medium.