Soma's Boat (Soma no Fune)

"Soma" (杣) is a pre-modern Japanese term denoting a woodcutter or the forested mountain from which timber is harvested, while "fune" means boat. The title evokes a vessel associated with — or built from — mountain-cut timber, drawing on the historic relationship between forested uplands and the rivers that carried logs downstream to settlements. As a single-medium mokuhanga, the print would be carved and pulled with water-based pigments on washi, the same chain of material — wood, water, earth, fibre — that the subject itself describes. Compositionally, a boat lends itself to an elongated form set against or within landscape, and the grain of the block can be registered into the printed surface to underscore the image's origin in cut wood. The piece reflects Furusaka's wider interest in the material continuity between forest and artefact, an interest grounded in her studio practice in an old wooden Osaka cottage where the building itself stands as a record of timber transformation.