Nippon Post ``Returning from the Bath in the Rain''

NIPPON POST on 20 April 1958 printed a First Day Cover stamp called "Returning from the Bath in the Rain'' by Japanese artist Kiyonaga Torii (1752-1815). The cachet featured the full Kiyonaga Torii woodblock print. To mark the Philately Week beginning with 20 April 20, this 10 yen postage stamp had for its design a work by Kiyonaga Torii, a ukiyoe artist (1752-1815) of the Yedo period. It was released for sale throughout Japan and by correspondence with the Philatelic Agency, Tokyo Central Post Office.

 

Kiyonaga Torii was a student of Torii Kiyomitsu and the fourth generation successor painter of the Torii school. A figure who belonged to the period between Suzuki Harunobu and Kitagawa Utamaro, active in the Tenmei Dynasty. Torii improved Suzuki Harunobu's paintings of beautiful and pitiful women, and absorbed the characteristics of other artists, changing the beautiful women into slender, realistic and healthy "Qingchangbijin" style beauties. This style had a profound influence on many beauty painters.