Genji Monogatari

The sixth print of Saito Kaoru's ten-volume Genji Monogatari cycle, executed between 1982 and 1991. Although the medium is listed as etching, the image belongs to the mezzotint practice that Saito, a self-taught intaglio printmaker, brought to a high degree of refinement during the 1970s and 1980s. Mezzotint requires the printmaker to first roughen the entire plate with a rocker — a slow, physical labor that produces a uniform burr — before drawing the image in reverse by burnishing the burr away wherever lighter tones are required. The result, when printed, is a continuous tonal field rather than a network of lines. For his Genji series Saito favored this medium because the unbroken velvet of mezzotint blacks evoked the indoor, evening, and curtained settings in which much of Murasaki Shikibu's narrative takes place. The cycle occupied nearly a decade of his working life and remains the work for which he is principally remembered.