Ectasy

The title — a transliteration of "Ecstasy" — points away from external scene and toward an interior or emotional state, placing the print closer to the symbolist and expressionist currents that [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) absorbed from European modernism. Subjects of this kind are typically figurative but stylized: a face, a body, or a pair of figures rendered through a key block of strong contour and color blocks that work as mood rather than description. Nagase's years in France, including exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne between 1929 and 1936, immersed him in the Parisian milieu that produced expressionist woodcuts elsewhere in Europe, and he carried that grammar back into mokuhanga. Carving for a print of this kind tends to favor bold, gestural cutting over fine detail, with the [baren](/glossary/baren)-pulled impression on [washi](/glossary/washi) giving the line a slightly grained, hand-pressed quality that lithography cannot reproduce. The work sits within the experimental wing of his output and demonstrates the breadth of subject matter sosaku-hanga claimed as its territory.