Japanese Garden Spring Portland

A companion to Morimura's winter view of the same site, this mokuhanga shows the Portland Japanese Garden in spring, when flowering cherry, azalea, and fresh maple growth animate the carefully composed pond, pavilions, and stone arrangements. Morimura distills the planting into stylized rounded canopies and patterned undergrowth, contrasting saturated greens and pinks with the ordered geometry of garden architecture and stepping-stone paths. The print is built from multiple hand-carved blocks printed in succession on [washi](/glossary/washi), with crisp keylines and flat color fields rather than atmospheric gradation, a treatment that aligns him with the contemporary [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) sensibility while drawing on the meisho tradition of named places. Within Morimura's wider series of garden subjects — which includes Kyoto's Saiho-ji, Ginkaku-ji, and several overseas Japanese gardens — this work emphasizes how a single landscape can be revisited season by season, making the garden itself, rather than any one viewpoint, the recurring protagonist of his practice.