Rafu - Nude

Rafu (裸婦) is the standard Japanese term for a female nude. The print belongs to Hiratsuka's relatively small body of figure studies, a genre he approached with the same austerity that governed his landscapes and architectural subjects. Rather than the soft modeling of Western life drawing or the linear elegance of bijin-ga, Hiratsuka's nudes are typically built from broad planes of carved black sumi against bare washi, the figure's contour defined by the boundary between printed and unprinted areas. The technique renders the body as sculptural mass rather than decorative surface — a sensibility consistent with the sosaku-hanga conviction that the print should declare its origins in carved wood and inked paper. Designed, cut, and pulled entirely by the artist, the work reflects Hiratsuka's lifelong commitment to the jiga-jikoku-jizuri principle that distinguished the creative print movement from the studio division of labor in shin-hanga and ukiyo-e.