Lesson in Japanese Dancing

A lesson in Japanese dance — nihon buyo — is rendered with the attentive warmth that Asano brought to scenes of traditional artistic training and transmission. The image likely shows a teacher and student, the teacher's practiced movement contrasted with the student's careful, self-conscious imitation — a dynamic that captured both the beauty of the dance form and the human relationship through which it was passed from generation to generation. In Kyoto, the world's center of geiko and maiko culture, scenes of dance instruction were a living part of the city's daily visual landscape.