The three sisters portrayed on the screen - in ink and colors on silk, five and a half by eleven feet - wear modern kimonos. Two of the young women sit inside what looks to be a new - and likely quite expensive - automobile, while the third - probably the eldest sister, Hisako - stands outside; in one hand she holds a leather-cased camera, while the other hand rests atop - and almost seems to caress - the hood of the car.
It took some doing to identify the sitters in this triple portrait, but it turns out they were the three eldest daughters of the wealthy right-wing industrialist and cabinet minister Fusanosuke Kuhara 久原 房之助, founder of Hitachi among other companies. A politician from 1928, he was deeply involved in an attempted coup d'état in 1936 - the very year this portrait was created - and was briefly imprisoned. And he would later be labelled a Class A war criminal by the post-war tribunal and included in the "Purge", the prohibition of certain Japanese individuals from participation in public service. (His daughters had married into other prominent families and had faired better. And after the occupation ended in 1952, Kuhara returned to political life.) The triple portrait, however, shows nothing of the turbulent years of Japan in the mid-1930s, a turbulence with which the family was so deeply involved. Instead, the three elegant sisters radiate nothing but grace, financial security, and utter calm.
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Yamakawa Shūhō (山川 秀峰, 1898–1944), Japanese painter active in the Taishō and Shōwa eras, as well as a printmaker of the Shin-hanga movement. He was born in Kyoto with the name Yamakawa Yoshio. His first teacher, Ikegami Shūhō, gave him the name Yamakawa Shūhō. Yamakawa then went on to study with Kiyokata Kaburagi. In the late 1920s, he started designing woodblocks prints of beautiful women, many of which were published by Shōzaburō Watanabe, and he also worked as an illustrator in the 1930s. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944.
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