Lunch box

This print from the Showa Shokugyo Emaki centers on the bento trade, likely depicting a maker, vendor, or station hawker (ekiben-uri) of the boxed lunches that had become a fixture of Japanese rail travel and urban work life by the Showa period. The composition typically arranges the lacquered or wooden bento boxes in stacked geometric rows, with the worker's hands or figure positioned to indicate scale and activity. Wada exploits the decorative potential of the subject: the regular grid of compartmentalized rice, pickles, and grilled fish lends itself to the flat color blocking he favored, and the printer would have used multiple key registrations to keep the small internal divisions crisp. The print belongs to Wada's broader documentary impulse, recording a trade that—unlike cormorant fishing or coopering—was firmly rooted in modern conditions of railways, factory shifts, and urban commuting. Within the seventy-two-print series, it stands as a quiet acknowledgment that Showa labor was as much about feeding the workforce as about producing goods.