Self-Portrait Paper size: 26.3 x 39.7 cm., self-printed in 1953. Red seal "Tomo" bottom right.

Dated 1953 and self-printed, with a red "Tomo" seal at the lower right, this self-portrait places Inagaki within a long tradition of sosaku-hanga artists turning the print to their own face. By the early 1950s he was a fully established figure of the creative-print movement, and the act of carving and pulling one's own likeness was itself a programmatic statement: the artist as sole agent at every stage, from drawing to baren impression. Self-portraits in sosaku-hanga typically rely on heavy key-block contour, severe simplification of features, and restrained color, reflecting the woodblock medium's resistance to fine half-tone. The 26.3 × 39.7 cm sheet sits below standard oban dimensions and points to a personal, exhibition-scale work rather than an edition produced for a commercial publisher. Alongside his cat and still-life subjects, the self-portrait widens the documentary range of his output and registers the maker's presence inside a body of work otherwise devoted to animals and household objects.