Combing the Hair, Kamisuki

The appended title Kamisuki — the Japanese term for combing or dressing the hair — makes explicit the subject's cultural specificity: kamisuki was a domestic ritual with established conventions in bijin-ga imagery, connecting Kotondo's work to a lineage running from Utamaro's late-eighteenth-century prints through the Meiji-era paintings of Kaburagi Kiyokata, under whom Kotondo trained. In this print the woman is depicted mid-gesture, a comb or hand moving through loosened hair, the nape and shoulders partially visible. Kotondo's draftsmanship, rooted in his parallel career as a kabuki poster painter for the Torii school, gave his figure outlines a distinctive clarity that his carvers translated with precision into the woodblock. The print's bokashi gradations model the face and neck without harsh shading, and the hair rendering — achieved through densely cut parallel lines on a separate block — demonstrates the technical demands of the kamisuki subject.