Gold Fishes

Gold-colored fish, likely the fancy varieties bred for centuries in Japan for their ornamental beauty, swim through a contained space in this woodblock print. Yoshida captures the fluid movement of goldfish with lines that emphasize the trailing fins and rounded bodies that selective breeding has produced. Japanese goldfish (kingyo) occupy a unique cultural position as both living art objects and festival attractions, and their depiction in printmaking has a long history stretching back to Edo-period artists. Yoshida's rendering pays attention to the way light passes through translucent fins and reflects off metallic scales, using the woodblock medium's capacity for layered transparency to suggest the fish's underwater luminosity.