Our ninth print is an interesting design by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. It is from his famous series 'One Hundred Aspects of the Moon', and uses the traditional character of Hotei - the god of happiness - to illustrate a zen parable.

The saying takes many forms, but can perhaps be paraphrased as "Teachings are to enlightenment, as a finger pointing at the moon is to the moon itself. Even though the moon be visible in the sky, the person who gazes only at the finger will never understand its beauty."

Reading about this, I think that it might perhaps have been best to save this image for the final position in my series. It would have served as a good reminder to us all - not to get so caught up in the 'analysis' that we miss the beauty of the prints that we are looking at. But now that I've said that, I have to break my own advice and start looking at the details!

Although this print was originally created in the 'classical' manner - drawn by a brush first, then carved and printed - if you compare it with some of the previous ones in the set, you may notice an interesting difference. The calligraphic lines on the Sukenobu design (print #6) for example, are smooth and elegant, but Yoshitoshi was obviously a man of a different temperament. His lines are brash and vigourous, even almost slapdash.

To carve them, I made use of the technique known as kasure-bori (scratch carving), in which the lines are cut in imitation of the way that a brush loses ink as it moves along. This takes quite a bit more time to carve, but makes the lines much more lifelike and interesting. I suspect that the carvers of Sukenobu's era would consider work like this to be a 'mistake', but all traditions evolve, and by the time that this print was designed in the Meiji era, nearly all ukiyo-e carving was done this way.

So we're now halfway through the series. We've covered a lot of ground, but I still have a very long 'wish-list' of ideas, and we have some very interesting prints coming soon. My biggest regret about this series is that I myself can't enjoy the excitement of opening each package as it arrives!

David

December 2010