Cat

Cat presents a feline subject rendered in mokuhanga, the multi-block woodcut technique central to Japanese print traditions. Cats had long featured in ukiyo-e — Utagawa Kuniyoshi, whose style Fukami is known to have referenced, made cats a recurring motif both as standalone studies and as anthropomorphized characters. A standalone cat print typically isolates the animal against a flat or minimally inflected ground, allowing the carver and printer to concentrate on the contour line and the gradations of fur. Areas of bokashi (tonal gradation produced by wiping pigment unevenly across the woodblock) are commonly used to suggest the soft transitions of a cat's coat without recourse to outline alone. Within Fukami's broader body of cat-themed work, this print fits a strand of twentieth-century printmaking in which traditional carving and baren-burnished impression were applied to intimate domestic subjects rather than the historical or warrior themes of earlier ukiyo-e.