Sansa festival

The Morioka Sansa Odori is an Iwate Prefecture summer festival featuring synchronized taiko drumming and dancers in yukata and headdresses moving through the streets in long processions. Ido's print likely captures the rhythmic energy of the procession — drummers in formation, the kinetic moment of taiko striking, festival lanterns suspended overhead. Working in mokuhanga, Ido would render the warm reds and oranges of festival attire against night-dark backgrounds using carefully registered woodblocks. The print expands beyond his characteristic Kyoto subjects into northern Japan's matsuri culture, suggesting an interest in documenting traditional festivals as cultural artifacts much as he documented Kyoto's seasonal landscapes. Festival prints in his body of work typically use [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to suggest evening atmospheres and the glow of paper lanterns against the deep ink-black of the sky.