Jinbo Tomoyo (1902–1994)

Condition Report

Impression & Colours

Excellent. A fresh, well-registered impression. The salmon-pink ground is printed with a soft bokashi that deepens towards the right edge; the large coiffure is carved with fine parallel hair lines and softened with grey gradation at the hairline and temples. The yellow checked kimono is bright and even, its olive stripes laid in with deliberately brushy, overlapping strokes, and the black satin collar shows a gentle tonal variation that gives it the sheen of fabric. The red chrysanthemum hair ribbon, the patterned under-kimono at the breast and the pink sash in her hands are crisp. Garment edges are outlined in silvery grey, and the hair tie appears to carry a metallic silver accent.

Paper

Very good. Full sheet with original deckle edges. The image area is clean. The margins show even, light toning. As fine an example as one could hope to find.

⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully — they form part of this condition report.

Feeling in the Night — An Edo Townswoman, Off Stage

A woman looks down at the pink under-sash she holds in both hands, loosening or retying it. Her yellow checked kimono has slipped wide at the shoulders, opening the black satin collar and showing a glimpse of the patterned under-layer beneath. The title, Yajō, sets the hour: this is not a woman dressed for the street but one caught in a private moment at night, when the sash comes undone. Nothing in the image is spelled out, and Jinbo does not need it to be — the lowered eyes and the hands at the sash carry the whole mood.

The costume is the key to the design. A yellow check trimmed with a black satin collar is the dress of the stylish Edo townswoman, and the great swept coiffure — bound with a red chrysanthemum ribbon and a spray of white cords — belongs to the same world. It is the world Jinbo drew for thirty years as the illustrator of Zenigata Heiji Torimono-hikae, the detective serial set in Edo. Here that familiar figure is lifted out of the magazine page and given the full luxury treatment of the woodblock: flat bands of yellow, olive and black set against the finely carved hair and the softly modelled face.

Jinbo Tomoyo — Thirty Years in Edo

Jinbo Tomoyo (born Teisaburō, 1902, in Yagenbori, Nihonbashi, Tokyo; died 1994) joined the Asahi newspaper company in 1917 and trained under the illustrator Hirezaki Eihō, who gave him the name Tomoyo. In 1940, aiming to work as a painter as well, he also studied under Itō Shinsui, the central figure of shin-hanga bijin-ga. His career was built on illustration for magazines such as Kōdan Kurabu, Shūkan Asahi, Shūkan Shinchō and Ōru Yomimono. For Nomura Kodō's Zenigata Heiji, he supplied the illustrations for three decades, until the author's death. He was also a haiku poet who led his own haiku circle.

His woodblock work was a private undertaking. In 1937 he set up a print study group in his own home and issued a self-published collection of his woodblock prints in three instalments — Shunshō, Yajō and Ugo — all carved by Satō and printed by Inomura Shōnosuke, the same two craftsmen named on this sheet. His documented print output is small: around eight bijin-ga and a portrait of the poet Bashō are recorded.

Collector's Note

With only a handful of bijin-ga designs recorded, Jinbo Tomoyo's prints appear on the market infrequently, and outside Japan they are little known. This sheet is fully documented in its own margin — dated, signed and sealed, with the carver and printer named and the title blind-embossed. In drawing and craftsmanship it sits squarely in the Shinsui school of bijin-ga, while prints under Jinbo's name still trade well below those of his teacher.