Unknown- WHITE-BARKED TREES

White-barked trees — birch, aspen, or perhaps the paper birch known in Japan as shirakaba — form the subject of this untitled print, the pale trunks rising through the composition with the vertical energy that made tree-trunk studies so central to Kitaoka's practice. The white bark reflects light differently from the surrounding forest, creating a natural luminosity that the woodblock medium can render through careful choice of ink density and the reserved (unprinted) white of the paper itself.