Shōjo gahō, January issue 1927, vol.16 no.2 (cover)

Cover of Shōjo gahō (少女画報, Girls' Pictorial), January 1927 issue, vol. 16 no. 2, designed by Takabatake Kashō for the Tokyo publisher Tōkyō-sha. Shōjo gahō, founded in 1912 and running until 1942, was one of the dominant girls' magazines of late Meiji, Taishō, and early Shōwa Japan and was the principal venue in which Kashō's mature style was disseminated to a national audience of young women readers. His cover paintings for the magazine were widely imitated and helped fix the visual vocabulary of the modern Japanese girl: large eyes, slender figure, elaborate kimono or Western dress, atmospheric backgrounds heavy with seasonal motifs. The January 1927 cover places his characteristic figure type within the conventions of New Year imagery — bright color, decorative pattern, an idealized femininity intended to model the new year's hopes. The image is preserved in high-resolution scans at the National Diet Library and on Wikimedia Commons and is among the most reproduced of Kashō's magazine covers; the original publication predates 1931 and the work is in the public domain in Japan and the United States.