Beauty 1

A beauty — bijin — rendered in the direct Yumeji-style, her large eyes, slightly parted lips, and slender elongated form expressing the romantic ideal that Yumeji created and that Japan embraced as the face of the Taisho era. The Yumeji-style bijin was something new in Japanese visual culture: a modern woman who felt emotions publicly, whose sorrow and longing were legible in her posture and gaze, and who embodied the Taisho Roman aesthetic of romantic individualism. This first-designated "Beauty" is among the most direct expressions of that type.