The Setting

The title likely refers to a landscape captured at sunset, when graded color washes become the central technical concern. Mokuhanga pigments, bound in nori paste rather than oil, allow successive transparent overprints—the method by which Shimizu would build the layered transitions of an evening sky on dampened washi. Trained in Kyoto under Tomikichiro Tokuriki and later under Yoshisuke Funasaka, Shimizu inherited Tokuriki's preference for direct landscape observation, an approach that distinguishes her work from the figurative bijin-ga and theatrical traditions of earlier ukiyo-e. The bokashi technique—worked into the block with a damp brush before each impression—produces the soft tonal shifts that define this kind of subject. Whether the setting refers to sun, place, or scene, the print belongs to a continuing personal landscape vocabulary developed over decades of practice that bridges the Pennsylvania of Shimizu's upbringing and the Japanese workshop methods she absorbed in the 1970s.