A rare bijin-ga by a pupil of Itō Shinsui — carved by Ōkura Hanbei, hand-printed by Sekioka Senrei
| Artist | Jinbo Tomoyo (神保朋世, 1902–1994) — pupil of Hirezaki Eihō and Itō Shinsui |
| Title | Atataka — Warm |
| Date | Shōwa 56, 3rd month (March 1981), per the dated margin inscription (昭和五六年三月) |
| Carver | Ōkura Hanbei (彫刀 大倉半兵衛) |
| Printer | Sekioka Senrei — the margin inscription explicitly notes hand-printing (手摺, tezuri) |
| Technique | Woodblock print (mokuhanga), polychrome, hand-printed on thick washi |
| Format | Dai-ōban, approx. 45 × 30 cm (17.7 × 11.8 inches), full sheet with deckle edges |
| Signature | Signed Tomoyo (朋世) with red artist's seal, upper right |
Impression & Colours
Pristine. A superb, fresh impression. The warm blush-pink ground is even and unblemished; the red plum blossoms are printed with crisp double-tone petals over brushy grey branches; and the great black coiffure — its mass articulated by hairline carving of exceptional fineness and softened at the edges with bokashi — shows the carver Ōkura Hanbei at full strength. The green-and-gold striped kimono, its scattered white blossoms, and the indigo leaf-patterned lining all retain complete freshness, and the graded modelling of the lips and skin is beautifully preserved.
Paper
Pristine. The thick washi sheet is clean, firm, and full-size, with the original deckle edges intact. No toning, foxing, tears, or repairs. As fine an example as one could hope to find.
⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully — they form part of this condition report.
The title tells us the temperature. A young woman has let her striped green kimono slip from her shoulders — the season's first truly warm day, the moment the layers of winter finally come off — and she pauses, half-turned, against a screen of flowering red plum. The blossoming branches, rendered in a deliberately painterly, sketch-like manner over the blush ground, place us at the very threshold of spring; the loosened robe with its bold indigo leaf- patterned lining does the rest. It is a classic bijin-ga conceit — the season expressed through the body rather than the landscape — handled with restraint and considerable charm.
The design plays flat pattern against modelled form in the best shin-hanga manner: the crisp geometry of the striped kimono and the graphic indigo lining frame the softly graded skin tones, while the red half-moon hair ornament repeats the note of the plum blossoms above. The margin inscription is unusually complete for a print of this kind, recording not only the date but the full production credits — carving by Ōkura Hanbei and, explicitly, hand-printing (tezuri) by Sekioka Senrei.
Jinbo Tomoyo (born Teisaburō, Tokyo, 1902; died Tokyo, 1994) trained from the age of seventeen under the illustrator and painter Hirezaki Eihō, and subsequently studied under Itō Shinsui — the central figure of shin-hanga bijin-ga. He built his primary career as an illustrator, working for the magazine Kōdan Kurabu and the newspaper Kokumin Shinbun, for which he illustrated the celebrated serial detective novel Zenigata Heiji Torimono-chō. He was also active as a painter and haiku poet.
Because illustration and painting occupied most of his working life, Jinbo's woodblock prints are few — only a small number of designs are documented, and they appear on the market infrequently. What they show, when they do appear, is an artist fully fluent in the visual language of his teacher's school: the idealised oval face, the monumental treatment of hair, and a taste for figures suspended in atmosphere. His prints represent an authentic late continuation of the shin-hanga bijin-ga tradition, produced with the same craft standards as the movement's classics.
Jinbo Tomoyo's prints are genuinely scarce — his documented woodblock output is small, and impressions surface only occasionally. In craftsmanship, however, this sheet concedes nothing to the celebrated bijin-ga of his teacher Itō Shinsui: the hairline carving, graded flesh tones, and explicitly documented hand-printing are of the same luxury standard, executed by named traditional craftsmen. Prints of comparable refinement bearing Shinsui's signature routinely sell for several multiples of what Jinbo's work currently commands — a gap that reflects name recognition rather than quality, and one that makes his prints an unusually attractive proposition for collectors of the genre.
Shipping: Shipped flat, protected between acid-free tissue and rigid boards, via tracked and insured international post. Ships from Germany.
Guarantee: Original Japanese woodblock print. Guaranteed authentic. Full refund if not as described.
Hanga Nomad · Japanese Woodblock Prints