Kitsuneame

Kitsuneame, literally "fox rain," is the Japanese term for a sun shower, rain falling while the sun shines, an event folk tradition attributes to a fox wedding procession. Joshua Rome takes this evocative meteorological phenomenon as the subject of this oban mokuhanga print, using water-based pigments on washi paper to capture the paradoxical quality of simultaneous rain and sunshine. The mokuhanga technique, which requires dampened paper and water-soluble inks, has an inherent affinity with rain subjects: the printing process itself involves controlling the behavior of water on paper. Rome's treatment likely balances warm light tones with the cooler, streaked quality of falling rain, exploiting the medium's transparency to layer sunshine through precipitation. The folkloric title adds a dimension of Japanese cultural specificity to what might otherwise read as pure atmospheric abstraction.