Dream of a Butterfly (2)

Dream of a Butterfly (2) takes its title from the Zhuangzi parable in which the philosopher cannot tell whether he is a man who dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly now dreaming of being a man — a touchstone in East Asian literary and visual tradition. The numbered title indicates a second treatment of the motif within Ohtsu's output. Prints on this subject typically center one or two butterflies against a sparse field, often with a few flowers or grasses, leaving large areas of the [washi](/glossary/washi) unprinted or lightly toned to suggest the indeterminacy of the dream-state. The butterfly's wings allow for fine layered registration — patterned spots, banded edges, soft [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) from the body outward. Against Ohtsu's dominant register of rural landscape, this is a more contemplative, abstracted print, closer to the lyrical insect studies of the [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) tradition than to his [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) and farmhouse subjects.