Playing Battledore

The print depicts a woman playing hagoita, the New Year battledore-and-shuttlecock game (hanetsuki) traditionally associated with young women in the early days of the new year. The hagoita itself — a flat, paddle-like wooden battledore, often elaborately decorated — appears prominently in the composition, held aloft or extended in mid-stroke. Such seasonal subjects supply Shimura's bijin-ga with their framework of festival, ceremony, and domestic ritual, locating the figure within the calendrical cycle without lapsing into anecdote. Mokuhanga is well suited to the bright, patterned kimono customarily worn for New Year, with multiple color blocks supplying the densely registered textile design and bokashi gradation softening the modeling of skin and hair. The hagoita subject has a long lineage in ukiyo-e, traceable through Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and the bijin-ga artists of the Meiji and Taisho periods. Shimura's treatment situates him within that continuity while applying the restrained palette and psychological poise typical of his postwar work.