Tsuwabuki No LV

Tsuwabuki — leopard plant, Farfugium japonicum — produces clusters of yellow ray-flowered blooms in late autumn, rising on tall stems above broad, leathery, kidney-shaped leaves that hold their green through winter. As the fifty-fifth print in Ikeda's plant series, this composition would foreground the contrast between the waxy matte leaf surfaces and the radiant yellow florets, a contrast that nishiki-e color printing addresses through layered impressions of yellow pigment over a carefully registered black keyblock. Tsuwabuki flowers when most other garden plants have finished, making it a staple of late-season kacho-e and a counterpoint to the spring and summer subjects that dominate the genre. Ikeda's choice of this plant fits the documentary sweep of a numbered sequence that surveys Japanese flora through the calendar year, treating each species with comparable attention regardless of whether it carries celebrated literary associations or grows quietly in shaded temple courtyards and coastal slopes.