Chrysanthemum

Chrysanthemum is a Japanese woodblock print by Ohno Bakufu (1888-1976), a [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) artist best remembered for his marine subjects but whose broader practice also encompassed careful botanical studies in the [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) (bird-and-flower) tradition. This impression is documented through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org via a Hara Shobo listing, which preserves Bakufu's signature compositional clarity: a single bloom rendered with attention to the layered geometry of its petals, the curl of leaves, and the controlled gradation of color that shin-hanga publishers prized. Bakufu trained in Nihonga painting before turning to woodblock design, and that grounding is visible in the way the flower's structure is observed rather than stylized, each petal modeled by subtle [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading rather than by hard outlines. The chrysanthemum carries deep cultural resonance in Japan as a symbol of autumn, longevity, and imperial dignity, and Bakufu treats the motif with the quiet reverence typical of the shin-hanga movement, which sought to renew traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking for twentieth-century audiences without abandoning craft-based collaboration between artist, carver, and printer. While Bakufu's shin-hanga fish prints, particularly the influential Dai Nihon Gyorui Gashu series, account for most of his enduring reputation, prints like Chrysanthemum demonstrate the breadth of his practice and his comfort moving between zoological precision and floral lyricism. Collectors of Japanese woodblock prints value these less common subjects because they reveal Bakufu working in a quieter register, applying the same disciplined draftsmanship he used for sea bream and tuna to a single, contemplative blossom rooted in centuries of East Asian flower painting.