Fudo Myoo

A full-title rendering of Fudo Myoo, the immovable wisdom king, depicted in the canonical posture: standing on a rock, sword in his right hand, lasso in his left, jaw clenched in the bared-tooth grimace prescribed by Heian-era Shingon iconography. Sasajima's approach reduces the figure to broad, flat planes carved deeply into the block, with detail conveyed through chisel marks left visible in the printed impression. The composition likely concentrates tonal weight in the deity's body and aureole of flames, with the washi ground left to read as the surrounding void. Fudo Myoo recurs across Sasajima's output alongside images of Nara temple complexes such as Todai-ji and Kofuku-ji, where Fudo statues are venerated; the prints function less as devotional portraits than as records of the same Buddhist material culture that drew him to architecture, rendered through his self-printed mokuhanga method.