Hazy moon

A moon half-obscured by thin clouds or mist—the "hazy moon" (oborozuki) that was one of the most celebrated atmospheric subjects in Japanese poetry and art—is rendered here with the bokashi gradations that Shinsui used to build the soft, diffused glow of moonlight through cloud cover. The hazy moon carried enormous poetic weight in the Japanese tradition, appearing in classical waka and haiku as a symbol of things beautiful precisely because they are partially concealed—the principle of ma (negative space) extended to the sky. The bokashi printing excels at rendering this specific quality of light.