Tree peonies

Tree peonies (botan) are a long-standing motif in Japanese painting and [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e), but Yamaguchi's treatment departs from the descriptive bird-and-flower tradition of Hokusai or Koson. In a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) reading of the subject, the bloom is typically reduced to a few overlapping curved shapes and a darker mass standing in for foliage or stem, the composition flattened against a textured ground pulled from raw plank or coarsely worked wood. Yamaguchi often used [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations within a single petal-shape to suggest volume without modeling, and laid down keyblock-free color fields that rely on careful registration rather than line. The print represents his continuing engagement with traditional Japanese subjects on terms set by abstraction — preserving recognition of the motif while subordinating it to surface, color weight, and the material presence of the printed sheet.