Kazue Yamagishi

Kazue Yamagishi — identified by full name, suggesting a portrait of a specific person in Yumeji's world — appears in this undated print, the named subject giving it a specificity unusual in his more universal bijin work. Yumeji made portraits of people he knew throughout his career — fellow artists, models, patrons, companions — and these named works offer a different kind of access to his world than the archetypal, unnamed figures of his published illustrations. The specificity of a name grounds the image in the biographical reality of Taisho Japan.