Cat

A study of a single feline rendered in Sasajima's characteristic [sumi](/glossary/sumi)-heavy idiom. The treatment uses broad, expressively carved blocks of solid black ink with the cat's form emerging through negative-space carving — the gouge marks of the chisel left visible on the printed surface rather than smoothed. Sasajima carved and printed every block himself, working in the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) (creative print) tradition he absorbed from his teacher Onchi Koshiro. While his consuming subject was Buddhist architecture, animal subjects appear periodically across his output, executed with the same direct, almost calligraphic mark-making applied to temple beams and roof tiles. The composition isolates the figure against a plain ground, allowing the texture of the carved block and the absorbency of [washi](/glossary/washi) paper to dominate the visual field. The cat is read as a structural arrangement of dark masses against the paper's natural tone, without decorative line or sentimentality.