Nude

A second figure study, the print again situates Hiratsuka within the modernist wing of sosaku-hanga that absorbed European studio subjects — the nude, the still life, the portrait — into the woodblock medium. Where ukiyo-e and shin-hanga handled the female form through the conventions of bijin-ga, with attention to costume, coiffure, and seasonal setting, the unclothed life-class nude belongs to a different lineage: the Western academy that Hiratsuka encountered in his early training before he committed to printmaking. The medium imposes its own discipline on the subject. Carved contour on washi cannot mimic the continuous tonal modelling of charcoal or oil; the body must be constructed from decisively cut lines and from the interplay of black ink and reserved paper. The result is closer in spirit to a graphic reduction of the figure than to a sensual or anecdotal nude, consistent with Hiratsuka's broader practice and with the sosaku-hanga insistence that the artist take responsibility for design, carving, and printing alike.