Houses in Tamugimata

Tamugimata is a mountain hamlet in Yamagata Prefecture along the Dewa Sanzan pilgrimage route, known for its steep-thatched kabuto-zukuri farmhouses built to shed heavy snow. Morimura's print likely renders the cluster of dwellings as flat geometric volumes, the sweeping roof gables abstracted into bold triangular fields that anchor the composition. Surrounding rice terraces, mulberry trees, or stone walls would be parsed into discrete tonal planes, with foliage textures cut from densely incised key blocks. Working in self-published mokuhanga, Morimura prints from cherry and shina plywood blocks struck with the baren onto kozo washi, building each image from a dozen or more separate impressions registered by kento marks. His vernacular-architecture series, including views of Shirakawa-go and Tono, treat traditional Japanese houses as repositories of seasonal memory rather than picturesque relics. The Tamugimata subject sits comfortably within this body of work, sharing with Kawase Hasui's earlier shin-hanga village scenes a sober regard for rural building forms, but translated through Morimura's flatter, more graphic vocabulary that descends from the postwar sosaku-hanga movement of self-carved, self-printed work.