Start of the dance

Start of the dance captures the moment immediately preceding movement, a subject Shimura Tatsumi returned to repeatedly through his depictions of geisha and amateur dancers. The print likely shows a woman in formal dance kimono — sleeves arranged, obi tied high, a folded fan (mai-ogi) held in the hand — at the instant of taking the opening pose of a Japanese classical dance (nihon-buyo). Compositions of this kind depend on the contained tension of the figure: weight settled on one foot, head inclined, gaze lowered toward the fan or the floor. The printing would typically use [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) to soften the kimono ground, a saturated black for hair and obi, and selective embossing or [karazuri](/glossary/karazuri) to lift the textile pattern. Such dance subjects extend the [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) tradition Shimura inherited through Yamakawa Shuho and Kaburagi Kiyokata, but treat the female figure as a performer concentrating inward, a register more aligned with twentieth-century stage portraiture than with Edo-period genre prints.