Flower Spirit

Flower Spirit (花の精, hana no sei) takes up the conceit, common in Japanese folklore and Buddhist-inflected art, that a flower possesses an animate presence — a small kami or spirit residing within the bloom. In Akiyama's hands the subject is treated in his characteristic naïve, folk-art idiom rather than the refined kachō-e tradition of Hokusai or Koson: forms are flattened and outlined in a soft, hand-cut keyblock, color blocks are registered slightly loosely, and the washi often shows the impressed grain of the baren. Tonal modulation tends to be achieved through restrained bokashi gradations rather than virtuoso shading. The print belongs to the same devotional-folk register as his monks, Jizō figures, and owls, where sentient nature and Buddhist sensibility overlap. As a second-generation sōsaku-hanga artist trained originally in suiboku-ga and oil painting before turning to mokuhanga, Akiyama brought a painter's economy of mark to the block, and works such as this exemplify his integration of brushwork sensibility with the carved surface.