Seimei VIII

Seimei VIII (生命 VIII, 'Life VIII'), 2024, is the eighth entry in Mamiya's ongoing Seimei series and was shown in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025. At 90 × 61 cm, the work sits at the larger end of contemporary intaglio scale, requiring a press bed and paper format well beyond the dimensions typical of traditional Japanese print formats such as [oban](/glossary/oban). Mamiya combines etched line and tonal passages with pigment-print overlays, a hybrid approach that lets her register finely bitten detail against broader chromatic fields and avoid the registration limitations of multi-plate color etching. The 'Life' title, sustained across at least eight numbered iterations, points to a recurring engagement with organic form rather than narrative subject matter; the series invites readings of growth, cellular structure, or vegetal motif filtered through abstraction. The marriage of etching and digital pigment printing, increasingly common among contemporary Japanese printmakers, departs from the woodblock lineage of [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) while remaining tethered to the technical rigor of Mamiya's training at Joshibi University of Art and Design under Akira Baba and Kiyomi Kato.