Woman with traditional hairstyle

This print depicts a female figure wearing a classical Japanese coiffure, likely a shimada or related upswept style associated with unmarried women, geisha, or historical-period dress. Although [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) is more commonly associated with the polychrome [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) and [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) traditions, Hiratsuka adapts the genre into the reduced vocabulary of black-and-white [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), where the figure is built from carved planes of solid black hair, the white of the [washi](/glossary/washi) standing in for skin, and contour lines describing the kimono collar and facial features. The absence of color shifts the emphasis to silhouette and the rhythm of cut marks. Figure subjects are less common in Hiratsuka's output than landscape and architectural prints, but he returned to them periodically across his long career, treating the human image with the same direct knife-on-block approach he applied to temples and natural scenes — consistent with his lifelong insistence that the artist alone should design, carve, and print each work.