Kotondo is best known for bijin-ga, but his complete oeuvre includes actor prints and other figure subjects. His small corpus of only 21 designs ensures that all authenticated period impressions carry collector interest and scarcity premiums.
A woman applies rouge to her lips — the same intimate cosmetic ritual that Kotondo depicted in multiple versions across his small bijin-ga oeuvre. The Japanese title Beni names the red lip pigment itself, the traditional cosmetic applied with a small brush in the act that Kotondo found inexhaustibly interesting: a woman attending to her own beauty in private, absorbed in the precise, habitual act of self-adornment. The 1932 date places this among his final sustained period of bijin-ga production.
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Rouge- lipstick — Beni was created by Torii Kotondo (鳥居言人) in 1932.
Rouge- lipstick — Beni was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1932).
Rouge- lipstick — Beni depicts figures, bijin-ga, and portraits.
