HARUNOKUMO (Spring clouds)

Harunokumo (春の雲) — spring clouds — is a sky-focused subject unusual in Nishijima's predominantly architectural oeuvre, suggesting either a landscape composition in which the cloud forms are the primary subject or a scene in which clouds are rendered prominently above a traditional streetscape. Spring clouds in Japanese visual culture carry associations with impermanence, the passing of cherry blossoms, and the soft instability of the season. In woodblock printing, rendering clouds requires graduated bokashi applied across wide sky areas, with multiple passes of the baren to build tonal depth in the cloud masses while preserving the paper's white for highlights. Nishijima might situate the architectural subject — a temple roof, a rural village roofline — in the lower portion of the composition, allowing the cloud formations to occupy the upper half of the picture plane. The palette appropriate to spring clouds is soft and varied: warm whites, pale grays, and the subtle pinks or ochres that appear when spring light catches cumulus formations. The result would be one of his more atmospherically ambitious subjects.