Tentou Mushi (Lighting Bug)

A small-format water-based multicolour woodcut depicting a single luminous insect, the title turning on a deliberate kanji substitution: the standard 天道虫 (tentou mushi, ladybug, literally 'heaven's-way bug') is rewritten as 点灯虫 — 'lamp-lighting bug.' The pun reframes a familiar garden insect as a tiny domestic light source, aligning the subject with the lamps, paper packaging, and other minor objects Honda repeatedly returns to. Water-based pigments printed in successive impressions from carved blocks allow the soft, semi-transparent layering and bokashi gradations characteristic of mizu-e technique, well suited to rendering the diffuse glow the title implies. The composition is almost certainly intimate and centred, the insect isolated against a quiet ground in the manner of her other single-object studies. Within Honda's wider practice — small flying insects appear alongside wrinkled shirts and discarded wrappers as instances of things on the verge of disappearing from notice — this print extends her interest in the overlooked, while the wordplay reflects the graphic-design sensibility carried over from her years at the Kyoto paper-products studio BOX & NEEDLE.