Tatta Shizue

Tatta Shizue (also rendered Tatsuta Shizue) was a Japanese stage and screen actress active in the early Showa period. As with the Kurishima Sumiko portrait, this print places Tokuriki within a small subset of his career devoted to celebrity bijin-ga rather than the temple landscapes that defined his later reputation. The composition likely follows the conventions of period actress portraiture: a half-length or seated figure in patterned kimono, with the face rendered through a few precise lines for the eyes, nose, and mouth, and the hair set off as a flat black mass cut from a separate key-block. Color registration would be especially exacting in the kimono pattern, where multiple blocks layer textile motifs in nishiki-e fashion. Surviving from a moment when Tokuriki was still finding his subject matter, prints of this kind illustrate the artist's early engagement with the broader Kyoto and Tokyo print market before he settled into views of temples, gardens, and Mount Fuji.