Dressing Table

The dressing table (kyodai) is a long-established subject in bijin-ga, traditionally showing a woman attending to her hair or makeup before a low mirror, and Yumeji's treatment reworks the convention through his Taisho lyrical idiom. The composition would center on a seated female figure in profile or three-quarter view, the mirror echoing the curve of body and hairstyle, with restrained color blocks applied through successive woodblocks on washi. Where Edo-period dressing-table prints by Utamaro or Eishi emphasized the erotics of preparation, Yumeji's version tends toward inward absorption, the act of looking at oneself rendered as a moment of private reflection rather than display. This print sits within his ongoing dialogue with the historical bijin-ga vocabulary, retaining its iconographic furniture and gestures while overlaying the elongated proportions, oversized eyes, and decorative line that distinguish his Yumeji-shiki bijin from the courtesans of ukiyo-e.