若さを誇示できる砂浜は、モガ(モダンガールの略)に好まれた遊び場であった。ここでは、　二人の美人が、最新のストライブのスポーツウェアを着て、流行のパーマネントのショートヘアで座り、余暇を楽しんでいる。彼女らは、帽子、ウクレレとハンドバックといった、飾りものに囲まれている。見えていないがビーチパラソルが、白色絵具で点描された砂に置かれ、その影は、繊細に帆立貝形の灰色の枠となって、二人の親友を囲んでいる。

The beach, a place to show off one’s youth, was the preferred playground of the moga (short for modan gaaru, or modern girl). Here two beauties, dressed in the latest striped sportswear and wearing fashionable Western-style bob hairstyles with permanent waves, sit on the beach enjoying their ample leisure time. They are surrounded by their accessories—a broad-brimmed hat, a ukelele, and a purse shaped like a volleyball. A delicately scalloped gray shape encircles the two friends, the shadow cast by an unseen beach umbrella on the sand, which is dotted with thick white pigment.

The woman on the right is Chiyoko Yamamoto, the daughter of a prominent Tokyo family. She studied art with Shuho, and one day after class was to meet a friend, Ota Misuzu, for an excursion to Chigasaki, a coastal area close to Tokyo. The artist accompanied them and made sketches for this final composition.

This work was exhibited at the government-sponsored Teiten exhibition in 1933. By choosing to portray the privileged women on a folding screen, the artist was compounding the suggestion of the luxury of his subjects by capturing them in a format that was once among the exclusive—and luxurious—possessions of the elite of society.

Rotation 2: August 15-September 27, 2009