“Shade of the trees”

Dated 2022, this landscape depicts the dappled light of a wooded clearing or tree-lined path, a recurring motif in Mibugawa's catalogue. The likely composition pairs upright trunks with a ground plane of shaded earth or grass, the foliage rendered in massed greens rather than individual leaves. Mibugawa achieves the impression of filtered light through layered [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) printing — the gradient pulled across each block by hand with the [baren](/glossary/baren) — so areas of canopy shadow soften into sunlit patches without drawn outlines. Working on [washi](/glossary/washi) at the Kyoto-based Unsōdō publishing house, he carves and prints many of his editions himself, which keeps the registration loose and the colour bleeds organic. 'Shade of the trees' belongs to a quiet seasonal cycle in his output that includes spring rice fields, summer lotus ponds, and winter days, all sharing the same depopulated, watercolour-adjacent palette. The work sits between the publisher-led [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) tradition and the artist-made sōsaku-hanga ethos he straddles.