Ofuku

Ofuku is a print associated with Uemura Shoen, the celebrated Kyoto nihonga painter who became one of the most important woman artists in modern Japan and the first woman painter to receive the Order of Culture, in 1948. Born in Kyoto in 1875, Shoen trained in the local Maruyama-Shijo and Kano traditions under Suzuki Shonen, Kono Bairei, and Takeuchi Seiho, and built her career on a sustained painting practice devoted to bijin-ga, or pictures of beautiful women, drawn from a wide range of social types, theatrical references, and historical settings. The title Ofuku refers to the comically rounded female mask of the kyogen theater, where Ofuku represents a humble, plain-faced young woman, often paired with the haughty mask of Hyottoko and embedded in the festive masked dance traditions of folk Japan. The mask's broad smile and pinched eyes have given Ofuku a distinct iconographic afterlife in Japanese visual culture, where it serves as a folk emblem of good cheer. A print bearing this title under Shoen's name would draw on this folk and theatrical iconography, refracted through the artist's nihonga sensitivity to facial nuance, costume, and emotional restraint. Shoen's print designs, often derived from preparatory paintings, circulated alongside her paintings and contributed to the wider currency of her bijin-ga sensibility outside the exhibition hall. The impression discussed here is documented through the Artsy listing on the secondary market (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/uemura-shoen-ofuku), which preserves a record of the design under Uemura Shoen's name. No museum acquisition is recorded in the working brief, and the print is therefore catalogued here from title and known artistic context alone.