My newest bijin-ga print, the second in my current series, has just been completed and is available just in time for Christmas. Furo Agari (After the Bath), shows a young woman in a boldly checked blue yukata (cotton kimono) sitting on the tatami mats near a paper-screened window, and is from the Tou Nishiki Bijin Awase (Collection of Eastern Brocade Beauties) set. The background of this design is printed in goma-zuri technique (lit. sesame printing) to give a soft and broken effect, acting as a quiet foil to the saturated colour of the yukata, and the obi or sash is printed in the same way. There is also mica and 22-carat gold leaf on the obi, and, as in the first design from the series, my surname is blind-printed in the bottom margin.I have again used Iwano Ichibei VII paper, and the edition number is 100 as before. The price will be the same as Cho Musubi (Butterfly Bow), the first Tou Nishiki design, and many of you will know that I had a great success with that piece in the annual CWAJ exhibition in Tokyo in , so I hope Furo Agari will attract the same attention. Like that design, and in fact all the prints from this series, certain elements of the design escape into the borders, such as the fingertips and her little mauve tabi, or bifurcated socks.
