Black Rain

Black Rain employs vertical descending marks rendered in deep, [sumi](/glossary/sumi)-like tonalities — a compositional structure that reads as precipitation falling through a quieter chromatic ground. The title carries cultural and historical weight: kuroi ame, the radioactive black rain that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the 1945 bombings, was given enduring artistic form in Masuji Ibuse's novel and Shohei Imamura's 1989 film. For an American mokuhanga practitioner working seriously within the Japanese woodblock tradition, the title indicates engagement with that postwar cultural memory rather than incidental nomenclature. Plant-based pigments restrict the palette toward natural blacks and greys derived from sumi, walnut, or iron-tannate dyes, while the silkscreen and intaglio layers introduce variations of mark density and opacity. Woodgrain may register where the [baren](/glossary/baren)-pressed cherry block leaves its surface texture across the broader tonal fields. The work fits within Jung's recent body of mokuhanga prints whose subject matter has drawn the attention of Japanese print biennial juries.