What Has Ended

Selected for the 68th CWAJ Print Show in October 2025 (catalogue number 112), 'What Has Ended' is a large-format woodcut at 79 x 59 cm — a scale closer to gallery-print conventions than to the oban dimensions of historical ukiyo-e, and one that gives the carved block surface considerable physical presence. The title, with its retrospective and elegiac register, situates the work within the introspective, often melancholic tendency that runs through much contemporary sōsaku-hanga (creative print) practice in Japan, where the artist personally carves and prints the block rather than working through a publisher's atelier. As a current student or recent graduate of Musashino Art University, Noda emerges from a program with a long-standing emphasis on the carved line and on hand-printing through baren burnishing onto washi. The CWAJ Print Show, held annually at Daikanyama Hillside Forum, functions as the principal commercial entry point for emerging Japanese printmakers, and Noda — born 2002 in Kanagawa — is among the youngest artists represented in the 2025 selection, marking 'What Has Ended' as an early-career statement from one of the newest voices in Japanese woodcut.