Torii Kiyonaga’s New Year’s Scene, published in 1786 at the very end of his career as a printer of bijinga, is an exemplary model of the influential style he developed. Moving away from the mannered poses and compositions of earlier ukiyo-e, Kiyonaga favored figures that filled the page in a natural way. The women leaving the bridge walk normally, their proportions are correct, both to themselves and to the others, and the most exaggerated movement, the woman on the far left raising her hand to her chin, is a model of restraint. The image is composed realistically, with a vanishing point, and people and objects are layered and hidden just as they would be in real life- there is no “stacking” that allows us to see everything. At the same time, he creates a scene with depth; the imagery stretches all the way back to the horizon line, and gets less and less detailed as it reaches that line so as not to distract from the primary action. It should be noted that Nihonbashi, the site of the bridge, was the was the epicenter of booksellers and publishers. This area of the city “functioned as the hub of cultural activity not just of Edo, but of all Japan.” (Matsunosuke, p. 64)
Kiyonaga’s prints are sometimes criticized for “a certain dullness” (Lane, 132) that leaves the viewer less interested in the people depicted as their surroundings or the composition of the print as a whole, and indeed, the viewer senses no emotion from the women in the print. The patterns on the kimonos, however, are truly spectacular, and draw our eyes to them by their superior and complex color.