Wild hair

The title points to a figure defined by disordered, expressive hair — possibly a yamamba (mountain crone) of folk legend, a kabuki actor in a fierce mie pose, or a figure conveying madness, supernatural agitation, or grief through the conventionalized signal of unbound hair. The motif has deep roots in Japanese pictorial tradition, from the windswept hags of Noh-related painting to the disheveled actors of late Edo yakusha-e portraits. Mori's treatment would render the hair as a single dramatic black shape, its mass and outline carrying most of the picture's energy, while the face is reduced to a few summary lines. The graphic concentration suits Mori's strengths: where shin-hanga artists used bokashi gradation to model atmosphere, Mori uses shape and edge. The print belongs to the strand of his work that engages folk and theatrical types rather than refined court subjects, a register he returned to throughout his career and one tied to his lifelong interest in the rougher, theatrical side of Edo culture. The compositional weighting toward a single expressive feature is consistent with his katazome-derived design logic.