Thunder in the Farming Land

This second state of Thunder in the Farming Land shows Hiyoshi Mamoru's recurring interest in the drama of Korean agricultural landscape under stormy skies. The composition's subject — thunderstorm over farmland — provided Hiyoshi with an opportunity to contrast the vast, turbulent sky with the human scale of rural Korean life below: workers in the field, farmsteads with tiled or thatched roofs, the flat geometry of paddy terraces. The multiple impressions across this series suggest it was a successful or significant design that Hiyoshi or his printer revisited, possibly adjusting key-block inking or the gradation of the storm clouds between runs. Washi paper, with its absorbent surface, would have been essential in achieving the soft, diffuse qualities needed to render rain-charged atmosphere convincingly across several color blocks.