Sensu Tabi 1

Kunio Kaneko (1949–2022) was a contemporary Japanese printmaker who worked within the [moku-hanga](/glossary/moku-hanga) tradition while developing a highly personal visual language combining abstraction with imagery drawn from Japanese material culture and classical literature. 'Sensu Tabi'—which may be read as 'Fan Journey' or 'Travels of the Fan'—takes the folding fan (sensu) as an organizing motif. The fan carries layered associations in Japanese culture: it is an accessory of poetry recitation, Noh theater, court dance, and seasonal ceremony, and it functions as a metaphor for the unfolding of narrative or temporal sequence. Kaneko's technique involved building translucent color fields through many successive thin inkings, a method that produces optical luminosity distinct from the denser impressions of commercial [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga). This first work in the series likely establishes the visual vocabulary—fan geometry, fragmented landscape imagery, or material surface—that subsequent prints in the set develop.