Japanese apricot

The Japanese apricot — ume — is the plum blossom that flowers in late winter, often while snow remains on the branches, and which has carried associations of perseverance and refined taste in Japanese poetry and painting since the Heian period. The subject can be treated as a kacho-e study of the branches themselves or as a bijin-ga in which a woman is positioned alongside or beneath plum blossoms, the flowers serving as a seasonal marker. Either reading places the print within Shinsui's interest in linking subjects to specific moments in the calendar. Technically, ume prints challenge the carver to render the small five-petaled blossoms cleanly while preserving the irregular character of older branches; Shinsui's prints typically use crisp keyblock outlines printed in indigo or pale gray rather than full black, with bokashi softening the transitions between blossom and ground. Like most of his designs, the print was issued through Watanabe Shozaburo as part of the shin-hanga collaborative model.