Medusa

The title's reference may evoke either the Greek gorgon or the jellyfish, and either reading aligns with Hagiwara's aesthetic concerns. A jellyfish subject would suit the translucent, layered quality of his multi-block technique, where successive impressions of pale pigment on washi paper can simulate the gelatinous transparency of a marine creature. A mythological reading would place the print within the postwar Japanese interest in cross-cultural symbolism, where sosaku-hanga artists drew freely on Western art-historical sources alongside indigenous traditions. In either case, the composition likely centers on a single radial form against a tonal ground, exploiting Hagiwara's interplay of edge, translucency, and embedded color. The print belongs to his broader investigation of how mokuhanga, traditionally associated with line and flat color, might be pressed toward atmospheric and even immaterial subjects through the sustained accumulation of carefully registered blocks.