In the bush

In the bush likely presents a dense passage of vegetation observed from within rather than viewed from the outside, the print surface filled with overlapping foliage and the broken light that filters through. The composition would dispense with the receding pictorial space of classical landscape painting and instead arrange itself as a near-flat tapestry of carved leaf forms — a strategy congenial to woodblock printing, where each block contributes a discrete tonal layer. Kitaoka's nature subjects often pursued this kind of immersive close-view composition, in contrast to the traditional kachō-e (bird-and-flower) format with its isolated specimens against blank ground. The work belongs to a strand of postwar [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) in which the natural world functioned as a field for textural and tonal experimentation rather than symbolic or seasonal reference. The carved blocks here would register their cutting marks across the foliage, the gouge becoming visible as the medium's signature within the depicted scene.