Benten with lotus flower

A second treatment of the same Buddhist subject — Benzaiten holding the lotus — likely executed as a variant or companion to the first, possibly in a different palette or compositional orientation. Working in revised states of a single iconographic subject was characteristic of Sasajima's practice, allowing him to test how a given configuration of black masses, carved texture, and earth pigment registered against [washi](/glossary/washi) paper. Benten figures appear periodically across his Buddhist iconography, sitting alongside his Bodhisattvas and temple deities. The print carries the same directness of carving and the same restraint of palette as the first version, with chisel marks left visible as part of the finished surface. Sasajima learned this approach to serial reworking from Onchi Koshiro, his teacher in the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) movement, who treated each impression as an opportunity to revise the relationship between block, ink, and paper rather than simply replicate a fixed image.