Nagasaki Doll (with baby on her back)

The Nagasaki doll carrying a baby on her back — a traditional clay or ceramic folk toy from this port city's distinctive craft tradition — is rendered here in color woodblock. Hiratsuka's interest in folk art objects from across Japan finds in the Nagasaki doll a subject that combines the domestic with the artifactual. The 1959 color print treats the toy figure with the formal seriousness he extended to all his folk art subjects.