Figs

Figs is a still life centered on the fruit, a subject that connects Fukami Gashu's woodblock practice to the still-life tradition within [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) and to the broader twentieth-century interest in everyday domestic objects rendered in mokuhanga. A print built around figs typically arranges two or three pieces of fruit on a simple ground, exploiting the carved keyblock for contour while reserving the colour blocks for the dense purples, greens, and reddish flesh tones that ripe figs offer. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, achieved by wiping pigment unevenly across the block before printing, is well suited to suggesting the bloom on a fig's skin or the shift from skin to interior at a split. Printed on [washi](/glossary/washi) with a [baren](/glossary/baren), the absorbent paper holds these subtle tonal transitions while keeping line crisp. Within Fukami's documented output---dominated by cat and animal subjects---a fig still life suggests a printmaker working across the kacho-e and shasei (life-sketching) traditions rather than confining himself to the warrior-print legacy of Kuniyoshi.