Encounter

The single-word title leaves the image's content open, suggesting either a figurative meeting between two subjects or a more abstract intersection of forms, lines, or colour fields. Mokuhanga accommodates both readings: the medium's history includes narrative encounters in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) genre scenes, but contemporary practitioners working through the International Mokuhanga Conference network often use the same materials for non-representational compositions where the encounter is between block and paper, or between layered impressions. Each printed colour requires its own carved block and a separate pass through registration, so any meeting of forms within the image is also a record of repeated alignments under the [baren](/glossary/baren). Water-based pigments mixed with rice paste sit into the [washi](/glossary/washi) rather than on it, producing the soft edges where two printed areas overlap, and these overlapping passages can themselves read as encounters between hues. Wong's participation in the 2021 Nara exhibition places the print within a community that frequently treats mokuhanga as a meditative rather than narrative medium, the title functioning as an interpretive prompt rather than a description.