Cat with ribbon

A second variation on the cat-with-ribbon motif, indicating Inagaki's habit of returning to a single compositional problem across multiple states or editions. The image likely centers a seated or recumbent cat with a thin band of contrasting color marking the neck — the ribbon serving as both a domestic detail and a chromatic accent within an otherwise restricted palette. Inagaki's cats rarely engage the viewer directly; they look sideways, downward, or close their eyes, treating the animal as a compositional shape rather than a portrait subject. The ribbon allows a sharp interruption of the dominant black silhouette, often picked out in vermillion or another saturated hue printed from a small key block. Expect visible [washi](/glossary/washi) texture through the flat color fields and the slightly raised impression where the [baren](/glossary/baren) has worked the paper into the block's grain. Within Inagaki's cat oeuvre, ribbon variants appear among the more frequently encountered subjects in postwar Western collections, where they entered through dealers serving American and European buyers in the 1950s and 1960s.