Narukami II (ed. 4/15)

This woodblock print is part of Takahashi Hiromitsu's Narukami II series, produced in an edition of fifteen impressions. The kabuki play Narukami, positioned among the eighteen canonical plays of the jūhachiban, draws its central image from the confrontation between priestly power and feminine strategy — the priest's kumadori makeup and dramatic aragoto poses providing strong visual material for graphic interpretation. An edition of fifteen is small enough to be managed entirely by hand, each impression pulled from the same carved blocks with individual attention to inking and registration. The woodblock medium contrasts with the flat, stencil-based color areas of Takahashi's [kappazuri](/glossary/kappazuri) work, offering instead the capacity for line variation, [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation, and the subtle topographic quality of carved wood transferred to dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) under [baren](/glossary/baren) pressure. This impression represents one of the later pulls in the limited edition.