Seashells

The print departs from Fujita's customary forest and landscape subjects to treat a still-life motif. Seashells distributed across a flat ground allow the artist to organise the composition through scattered repeated forms, exploiting the silhouette and texture of each shell against the unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi). The mokuhanga technique is suited to this subject: the cherry block records each shell's outline as a clean flat shape, while careful [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure varies the surface ink density to suggest the ribbed or whorled interior. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation may be used within individual shells to model their volume without recourse to outline shading. This kind of object study is uncommon in his published catalogue, which is dominated by trees and groves, and reflects the broader tendency in postwar [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) to draw from any subject the artist personally selects—a marked shift from the publisher-driven subject matter of Edo-period [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e).