Sagittarius, from the Zodiac Series, Shôwa period, circa 1973

This circa 1973 impression of Sagittarius from the Zodiac Series situates the work within Kurosaki's Shōwa-period practice, when his geometric abstract woodblock prints were gaining recognition in both domestic and international exhibition contexts. The Sagittarius sign, associated with forward propulsion and the centaur archer of Greek mythology, provided Kurosaki with a thematic premise that he could translate into directional formal energy—diagonal planes, vectored color fields, or asymmetric compositions that pull the eye toward a notional point beyond the picture plane. Kurosaki's training in nihonga gave him a sensitivity to interval and negative space that informed even his most geometric work, preventing the compositions from becoming mere hard-edge exercises. The printing of such a work in 1973 would have involved Japanese [washi](/glossary/washi) selected for its absorbency and surface texture, hand-carved woodblocks for each color, and the [baren](/glossary/baren)-rubbing pressure technique central to the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) tradition. The precise registration of multiple blocks is essential to the integrity of Kurosaki's abutting geometric forms.