Giant wave

Giant wave depicts a cresting ocean swell, a subject that places Sanmonji in dialogue with the long lineage of Japanese seascape printmaking running from Hokusai's Fugaku Sanjurokkei through the shin-hanga marines of Yoshida Hiroshi. As a contemporary sosaku hanga artist, Sanmonji approaches the motif on his own terms rather than as homage: the woodblock medium permits him to register the wave's silhouette in carved contour while using bokashi gradations across the swell's body to suggest depth and translucency. Metallic pigment, a recurring feature of his editions, would lend the foam and crest a soft luminosity that shifts with viewing angle. The print belongs within his broader body of dreamlike compositions that occasionally turn from the cats and sumo subjects he is best known for toward more atmospheric natural imagery. Like the rest of his output, it would have been issued in a numbered edition of 100 and hand-signed, printed on washi using traditional baren-burnished mokuhanga technique inherited from his teacher Nakayama Tadashi.