September Story 2

Kunio Kaneko (1949–2022) organized much of his printmaking practice around serial and sequential structures that allowed single themes to develop across multiple prints. 'September Story 2' situates the work within both a seasonal and a narrative frame. In the Japanese poetic calendar, September marks the opening of autumn—the beginning of declining summer heat, the first colored leaves, a quality of light that becomes lower-angled and more golden. Kaneko's [moku-hanga](/glossary/moku-hanga) technique characteristically involved many successive thin printings to build translucent color layers, producing a depth and luminosity distinct from commercial printing. His imagery drew on natural forms—grasses, water, sky, seasonal objects—but arranged them in configurations that resist literal reading, treating the print surface as a field for meditative rather than descriptive attention. The numbering of this work within a series implies a visual argument that develops across the set.