Plum Orchard at Yoshino

The plum orchard at Yoshino — the mountain celebrated for cherry blossoms but also supporting plum trees that bloom earlier and with a different, more austere beauty — is Senpan's subject in this 1943 print, made during the Pacific War when travel and normal life had been curtailed. The 1943 date gives the plum orchard image an additional dimension: made in the midst of wartime, the blooming plum — associated in the poetic tradition with endurance and beauty in adversity — carries a historical charge that the artist may or may not have intended.