Hairdressing

The print likely depicts a domestic scene of a woman arranging her hair, a subject with roots in Edo-period [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) (prints of beautiful women) by artists such as Utamaro and Eisen. Hiratsuka's [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) treatment renders the figure and her surroundings in carved black line on [washi](/glossary/washi) rather than the polychrome registration of his [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) predecessors. The sosaku-hanga movement, while rejecting the collaborative production model of ukiyo-e, did not abandon its subject matter — figures, interiors, and domestic moments continued to appear in prints by Hiratsuka and his contemporaries, pared back to essential form. Hiratsuka cut, inked, and pulled the print himself, treating the visible carving marks as a structural element of the image. Genre figures are less common in his output than his architectural and landscape work, but they punctuate his career across many decades.