Fawn is coming

Fawn is coming depicts a young deer in motion or at the edge of a scene, a subject that places the print in the broader tradition of [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e)---the bird, flower, and animal genre that emerged as a major branch of [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) in the nineteenth century and continued to flourish in twentieth-century mokuhanga. Deer and fawns carry strong associations in Japanese visual culture with autumn, with the sacred deer of Nara, and with poetic seasonal imagery, and a print built around a single approaching fawn typically isolates the animal against a pared-down ground that emphasizes pose and silhouette. The mokuhanga technique handles soft animal coats well, since carved keyblock outlines can be combined with colour blocks printed in [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) to suggest dappled hide or grass. Within Fukami Gashu's documented output, which references the style of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Fawn is coming represents the gentler kacho-e strand of that lineage rather than its warrior-print mode.