Cat and snow

Cat and snow places a feline subject in a winter setting, joining the cat studies that dominate Fukami Gashu's documented output to the broader Japanese tradition of seasonal imagery. Snow scenes have a long pedigree in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), from the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) landscapes of Hiroshige to the winter prints of the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) movement, and a snow-covered ground offers mokuhanga a particular technical opportunity: large passages of unprinted or lightly tinted [washi](/glossary/washi) stand in for snow, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation suggesting overcast sky or shadowed drift. Against this pale field, the cat reads as a compact dark or patterned silhouette, its outline carried by the keyblock and its fur worked up through additional colour blocks. The interplay of warm animal mass against cool, near-empty ground is one of the durable compositional devices of Japanese printmaking. The print connects Fukami's interest in domestic feline subjects, inherited from the Kuniyoshi cat-print tradition, to the seasonal sensibility that runs through Japanese woodblock practice.