People of Yamato (Japan) Picture Album (Yamato jinbutsu gafu), Second Series

The second series of the Yamato jinbutsu gafu (倭人物画譜 後編), published in Kyoto in Bunka 1 (1804), extends Yamaguchi Soken's survey of Japanese figure subjects begun in the first series of 1799-1800. Where the first series moved through the inhabitants of Kyoto and Osaka with the steady, descriptive line of Maruyama Ōkyo's pupils, the second series introduces a broader cast of travelers, regional types, and seasonal subjects, with several plates devoted to women on the road, shrine visitors, performers, and small groups gathered for the festival rounds of the Kyoto calendar. The Metropolitan Museum of Art's copy (accession 2013.827) is a one-volume continuation of the original set, bound and printed by the same Kyoto ehon trade that had supported the first series, and it carries Soken's signature and seal at the colophon. The plates demonstrate the mature Shijō-school habit of treating figures as observed individuals — each with a particular posture, costume, and relationship to its companions — rather than as generic decorative types. Together with the first series and the later Soken gafu and Soken sansui gafu, the second Yamato jinbutsu gafu cemented Soken's reputation as the leading figure-album designer in late Kyoto ehon and provided model compositions for younger painters across the nineteenth century.