Wisteria

Wisteria — fuji in Japanese, an auspicious motif tied to early summer — appears throughout the [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) bird-and-flower tradition that ran from Edo-period woodblock through the twentieth century. This print departs from that tradition in medium: it is an etching, an intaglio process in which lines are bitten into a metal plate by acid and printed under pressure, producing a different line quality from the carved-block edge familiar from mokuhanga. The cataloguing of an etching alongside Norikane's woodblock output suggests the artist worked across multiple printmaking techniques, a pattern common among postwar Japanese printmakers exposed to Western intaglio training through art schools and printmaking cooperatives. Wisteria's pendulous flower clusters and twining vines lend themselves to the sustained line work etching affords. Without exhibition records or a confirmed publisher, the date and edition size of this impression cannot be established from available English-language references.