Hagoromo (Feathered Robe), Shôwa period, circa 1984-1986

Hagoromo (Feathered Robe), produced during the Showa period circa 1984 to 1986, is a woodcut by Naoko Matsubara, one of the most internationally recognized practitioners of contemporary mokuhanga. The title refers to the celebrated Noh play Hagoromo, in which a celestial maiden descends to a pine-shadowed shore and a fisherman finds her feathered robe; she retrieves it only by performing a dance from the heavenly realm. The legend has been a touchstone of Japanese literary and visual culture for centuries, and Matsubara's treatment, documented here through the Harvard Art Museums, places it firmly within her ongoing engagement with classical Japanese subjects rendered in a strikingly modern woodblock idiom. Matsubara studied at the Kyoto City University of Arts and at Carnegie Mellon, and her woodcuts are typically cut directly on the block in a vigorous, gestural manner that preserves the energy of the knife. Her Hagoromo works from the mid-1980s belong to a period when she had settled in Canada and was producing large-scale prints that translated Japanese woodblock traditions into a bolder, often monumental format, frequently using strong black-and-white contrasts to evoke movement and dance. In this print the subject of the celestial robe becomes an opportunity to explore drapery, flight, and transformation through the carved line. The work exemplifies how contemporary mokuhanga can carry forward the technical lineage of Japanese woodblock printing, from the choice of wood and the use of the [baren](/glossary/baren) to the affinity with classical narrative, while expanding its expressive range to suit a modern global audience that engages such prints in museum and academic collections.