Wind forms

"Wind forms" is an unusual, somewhat abstract title for a Japanese woodblock print, suggesting that the subject is not wind's effect on a single object but the visible signatures of wind itself across a landscape: bent grasses, slanting rain, billowing fabric, scudding cloud, or rippling water. The mokuhanga process suits such linear, rhythmic subjects through finely cut key blocks that record curving and slanting lines, complemented by tonal blocks that flatten the surrounding field. Treatments of wind have a long pictorial history in Japan, from the windswept travelers of Hokusai's "Ejiri in Suruga Province" to the diagonal rain lines of Hiroshige's "Shōno"; [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) and [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) artists continued the theme with more abstract, formal interest. Fukami Gashu's title points to this latter sensibility, where the subject is closer to a visual idea—the shape that wind takes when it becomes visible—than to a specific named place or scene.