Two Pair of Eyes — 二人の瞳

Published in 1996 as a posthumous edition, this oban print depicts two figures whose gazes create the "two pairs of eyes" named in the title. Shimura Tatsumi constructs a composition organized around the act of looking, with two women whose visual attention creates intersecting lines of sight within the image. The Japanese title "Futari no Hitomi" emphasizes the eyes specifically, making vision itself the subject. This dual-figure composition is relatively unusual in Shimura's predominantly single-figure bijin-ga practice, and the relationship between the two women, whether conversational, conspiratorial, or coincidental, adds a narrative dimension absent from his solitary portraits.