On the way home

A title that names a moment of transition rather than a fixed scene — the passage of returning, associated in Japanese landscape tradition with figures crossing paths at the close of day. Such themes belong to the broader category of [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) and travel imagery that flourished in nineteenth-century woodblock work, where the road home at evening was a recurrent subject. In a contemporary mokuhanga rendering, the subject typically takes the form of a quiet landscape, possibly with a small figure or implied path in the middle ground. The medium lends itself to atmospheric handling: water-based [sumi](/glossary/sumi) and mineral pigments printed by [baren](/glossary/baren) onto dampened [washi](/glossary/washi) yield a softly absorbed quality of color, and [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading suggests the diffuse light of late afternoon. Joshua Rome's work in mokuhanga reflects sustained engagement with the technical vocabulary of the medium and with the contemplative subject matter long characteristic of Japanese landscape printmaking. The carved grain of the block frequently registers within the printed surface as a textural undertone.