Leave It to the Spring Breeze

Leave It to the Spring Breeze (春風にまかせ) takes its title from a phrase with explicit haiku resonance, the verb makase ('to entrust, to leave to') carrying a Buddhist undertone of acceptance and non-attachment that recurs throughout Akiyama's work. The title itself reads as the closing line of a poem, and the print very likely incorporates a handwritten haiku in his distinctive brushed cursive alongside the image, in the manner of haiga. The pictorial subject for prints of this register is typically a robed monk-figure, drifting petals, or a small animal—a cat or bird—presented in Akiyama's stripped-down folk vocabulary of flat color and visibly chiseled outline. The composition tends to leave generous margins of unprinted washi, allowing the calligraphy to occupy the picture as a coequal element. The sentiment connects to the spiritual register Akiyama traced back to his childhood drawing instruction under a local Buddhist monk in rural Ōita Prefecture.