9

This sheet, identified only by its plate number 9, comes from Yamamoto Shoun's series Women in Their Pursuits (Fujin Fuzoku Zukushi), one of the most ambitious print projects of his career and a touchstone of late Meiji woodblock production. The series, issued in the early years of the twentieth century, attempts something that ukiyo-e had only partially done before: to portray Meiji-era women across a wide spectrum of social roles and daily activities, from the home and garden to outings and entertainments. Trained originally in the Kyosai school before settling into a print career under the publisher Matsuki Heikichi, Shoun applied a refined, somewhat softened line and a restrained palette to subjects that earlier generations had treated more flamboyantly. The result is a body of bijin-ga whose women feel observed rather than invented. In this print, the figure occupies the sheet with the calm centrality typical of the series, her kimono pattern functioning as the principal field of visual interest, while background elements are kept spare enough to direct attention to gesture and posture. The cutting and printing show the high technical standards of Meiji block-cutters working in the carryover tradition from late Edo ukiyo-e. The image is preserved in the open archives of ukiyo-e.org, where the Women in Their Pursuits series has been digitized in its entirety. For students of Yamamoto Shoun and of Meiji woodblock prints more broadly, Plate 9 offers a clear example of how bijin-ga was being recalibrated in the decades around 1900 to record a changing society rather than to memorialize the licensed quarters.