Woman with Tousled Hair

One year after the end of the Second World War, Chihiro, who was 27 years old at the time, returned to Tokyo from Matsumoto City in Nagano Prefecture, where she had been evacuated during the war. In Tokyo, wishing to become a painter, she started studying art. During the day she worked as a newspaper reporter who, in addition to writing articles, could draw pictures, while at night, for three months, she studied at an art school run by the Japanese Communist Party’s department of propaganda. Soon she found herself participating in sketching sessions held in the studio of husband-and-wife artists Iri Maruki and Toshiko Akamatsu (Toshi Maruki) where, along with other young artists-to-be, she practiced drawing the human form. During this period Chihiro was never without paper and pencil, and in the work from this time, one can see that she was trying to find her own sense of line while experimenting with different styles.