Kujaku To

The peacock (kujaku) entered the Japanese pictorial tradition through Chinese sources and remained a recurring subject of [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) from the Rinpa school onward. Kimura Yoshiharu's print likely presents the bird either in profile with its train fanned, or in pendant pairing with another creature or flowering plant signalled by the particle to (and) in the title. Mokuhanga renderings of peacocks make particular demands of the printer: the iridescent ocelli of the tail feathers are typically built through layered impressions of green, blue, and bronze pigments, sometimes finished with selective [baren](/glossary/baren) burnishing to raise a metallic sheen on the eye-spots. The body is conventionally printed in cooler tones against a darker or contrastingly textured ground, with the tail occupying a curving diagonal across the sheet. Lacking confirmed details of Kimura Yoshiharu's training, the work cannot be assigned with confidence to a specific workshop, but the technical demands of a fully realised peacock composition imply collaboration with a trained carver and printer rather than a wholly self-produced [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) conception.