Dream

A second plate carrying the title Dream, etched in line on copper. The repetition reflects Saito's habit of returning to a single subject across variant compositions, refining gesture, framing, and tonal weight from one plate to the next. The image likely renders a solitary female figure in a quiet, suspended posture — the half-conscious state to which Saito returned across his career and which he aligned with the dream passages of The Tale of Genji and other classical sources. The technique relies on acid-bitten line rather than the rocked tone of mezzotint, so the result is sparer and more diagrammatic, with whites carried by the open ground of the paper. The pair of Dream plates suggests an ongoing investigation rather than a single completed image, and parallels the way Edo [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) artists revisited the same pose across multiple states.