MODERN 'MUSUME.' JAPANESE BIJIN OR WOODCUT PRINT OF A 1930'S BEAUTIFUL

[Tokyo ca. 1931, n.p.]. A single sheet woodcut print, Oban sheet size 38 x 26 cm., print margin to margin: 21.5 x 33 cm very good, minor mend in upper right margin area, not enter- ing the print margin, 6 tiny pin holes at left margin. RARE This print was issued in a Japanese magazine-like publicat- ergo the pin holes, from where it was bound in. Else clean, with very subtle gray background and moon in the upper left. Entirely hand printed by color woodblocks, on hand-made Washi paper. * Our scan can not do justice to this subtle print and its delicate colors. An English language tissue guard sheet came with this print and was tipped to its left marigin as issued by the publisher. It is scanned and viewable in its entirety on our web site. In essence it discusses the idea of a "Modern Musume" [Musume = girl], in contemporary Japan, with her, commonly called in those times the "Moga" [modern girl] styled short hair, but still retaining her traditional Kimono, and is "conspicuously taller than her mother..." "The print has been done according to the typical Japanese woodcut method handed down though the centuries by such great masters as Hiroshige, Utamaro ....The artist is Shuuhou Yamakawa, one of the present-day Japan's leading figures in the woodcut field." Extracted from the tissue guard sheet. * THE ARTIST: Yamakawa Shuuhou [1898-1944] was a Japanese style painter, born in Kyoto, and the star pupil of Kaburagi Kiokata and Ikegami Shuuho. Strongly influenced by the Ukiyo-e tradition, but his line is quieter and his colors less stylized than in earlier Ukiyo-e artists. Extracted and liberally cited from L. Roberts. * BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Roberts: DICTIONARY OF JAPANESE ARTISTS, p.195 * .