$500–$3,000. Common prints: $500–$1,000. Key value factors: Okamoto's colorful landscape prints are modestly priced and accessible to beginning collectors.
White Fox Lesson depicts a scene of instruction among kitsune, the fox spirits of Japanese folklore. The title suggests a moment of transmission, perhaps an elder fox teaching a younger one the arts of transformation and illusion for which these creatures are renowned. In Japanese myth, kitsune grow additional tails and gain greater powers as they age, and the idea of foxes conducting lessons adds a playful, humanizing dimension to the supernatural narrative. Okamoto renders this imagined scene in the [oban](/glossary/oban) woodblock format, using his [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) technique to build up layers of color that give the foxes a luminous, otherworldly quality. The white fur of the foxes requires particular skill in printing, as the absence of color must read as a positive, glowing presence.
Hebizukai
1932
Color woodblock print; oban
1935
Color woodblock print; oban
1964
Acrylic paint and oil pastel with oiled charcoal and ink over an ink and graphite underdrawing on paper
1964
Color lithograph with relief block and hand coloring; edition 35/36
White Fox Lesson was created by Ryusei Okamoto (岡本隆生).
White Fox Lesson depicts animals.
