The Two Kings

The Two Kings is a contemporary Japanese woodblock print by Takahashi Hiromitsu, dated 2017 and produced in the artist's [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) manner. Born in Tokyo in 1959, Takahashi has built his career on a sustained figurative woodblock practice in which firm contour line, broad areas of saturated hand-pulled color, and an engagement with Japanese folklore and Buddhist iconography combine into a recognizable studio style. The title The Two Kings most likely refers to the Nio, the pair of muscular guardian deities, Misshaku Kongo and Naraen Kongo, who stand at the gates of Japanese Buddhist temples as protectors against malevolent spirits. The Nio iconography is among the most physically dramatic in East Asian Buddhist art, with the two figures shown with bulging musculature, fierce facial expressions, and dynamic poses, one with mouth open to pronounce the syllable a, the other with mouth closed to pronounce un. A composition that places the two figures together within a single woodblock allows Takahashi's interest in firm contour and saturated color to register the dramatic physicality of the iconography in a contemporary studio idiom. Within his recent output, the print belongs to the religious and folkloric vein that runs alongside the artist's seasonal and figural subjects. The work is documented through the Artsy listing on the secondary market (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/hiromitsu-takahashi-the-two-kings), which preserves a record of the design under the artist's name. No museum acquisition is recorded in the working brief, and the entry is therefore catalogued here from the secondary-market record and the artist's known practice.