Autumn of Ginkgo

Autumn of Ginkgo focuses on the icho tree, whose fan-shaped leaves turn a saturated yellow before falling in dense carpets that briefly cover roads and temple grounds. Ohtsu's print likely composes the subject around a single mature ginkgo or a stand of trees, possibly within a temple precinct where the species is traditionally planted as a fire-resistant boundary marker. The technical challenge of the subject lies in the yellow itself: ginkgo's color is notably uniform and chromatically pure, requiring careful pigment selection — likely a layered application of yellow ochre and a brighter chromatic yellow — and clean registration to keep the leaves crisp against trunk and sky. Bokashi may be used at the canopy's edges to soften the silhouette. Within Ohtsu's autumn group, Autumn of Ginkgo serves as a chromatic counterpart to scenes dominated by red maples, broadening his record of how the season is experienced across different trees and settings in rural and temple Japan.