'Insurance girl' (hoken musume), illustration from Bugei Kurabu (Literary Club)
Medium
Frontispiece; woodblock print; ink and color on paper
Dimensions
Album: 8 1/2 x 5 5/16 in. (21.6 x 13.5 cm)
Classification
Prints
Culture & Period
Japan · Meiji period (1868–1912)
Department
Asian Art
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Donald Keene, in honor of Julia Meech-Pekarik, 1986
Accession Number
JP3708
Tags
Art Historical Context
Behold *Insurance Girl* (*Hōken Musume*), a poignant frontispiece woodblock by Tomioka Eisen created during Japan's transformative Meiji period (186–1912). This and color on paper illustration, sized at 8½ × 5⅜ inches, appeared in *Bugei Kurabu* (*Literary Club*), a magazine blending literature and martial arts. Eisen, a skilled ukiyo-e artist for his bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women) and genre scenes, masterfully evokes sadness through a woman's expressive face, intertwined with motifs of fire—perhaps alluding to the era's growing awareness of disasters and personal vulnerability. In Me...
About the Artist
Tomioka Eisen · 1864–1905
Japanese, 1864–1905