Hand mirror

A still life centered on a tebagami, the handled mirror used at a low dressing stand, a familiar object in Edo-period bijin-ga and a recurring prop in Japanese domestic imagery. Approached as a sosaku-hanga subject rather than a figural accessory, the mirror becomes a study in two contrasting circular forms — the polished disc and the ornamented back — joined by the linear shaft of the handle. Hiratsuka's monochrome cutting suits the object's surface logic: the reflective face can be left as unprinted washi or as a uniform black field, while the reverse, traditionally decorated with cast or incised motifs, allows for the kind of dense linear carving he applied to temple ironwork. The print belongs to the body of small still lifes through which he tested compositional ideas at intimate scale, parallel to his larger landscape and architectural sequences. As an isolated object study it also documents the continuity between the artist's modern practice and the older repertoire of Japanese decorative subjects.