The son of A[...] 18 yrs -- A[...] 50 years

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Here a young man of eighteen is paired with his father at fifty, a comparison the title makes explicit in its two ages. Its subject is a family, a theme that appears often in late nineteenth-century Japanese woodblock prints, when the craft was still widely practiced even as photography and Western printing methods spread. The color woodcut form, built from carved blocks inked in successive layers, let printmakers render clothing patterns and faces with fine detail. Because the names in the title are partly lost to the record, the print is best read as a glimpse of the generational ideals and everyday domestic life that such images reflected.

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