A red owl

A red owl is a kacho-e (bird-and-flower) subject, a genre with deep roots in Japanese printmaking and a sustained presence in twentieth-century mokuhanga. The title's specification of red is unusual — owls are more often rendered in browns, greys, and ochres — and suggests either an interpretive colour choice or an unusually saturated impression of the bird's plumage. A single-bird composition typically isolates the owl on a branch or against a plain ground, with the keyblock carrying the contour and feather pattern and additional blocks supplying the body colour and any background tone. Bokashi gradation may be used to soften the transition from the bird's silhouette into the surrounding space. Within the kacho-e lineage that runs from Hokusai and Hiroshige through to twentieth-century practitioners, Fukami's owl participates in the genre's preference for a single, attentively observed creature rendered through the layered economy of the woodblock medium.