Boat In a storm

The image depicts the calming of the storm on the Sea of Galilee (Mark 4:35–41), in which the disciples cry out in fear as their boat is overwhelmed by wind and waves while Christ sleeps. Watanabe's handling compresses the boat, several stylized figures, and the surrounding water and rain into a single dense, frontal composition. The waves are typically rendered as repeating patterned forms—curls and combed strokes—closer to textile design than to pictorial seascape, while rainfall is suggested by parallel diagonal striations. The figures are reduced to silhouettes outlined in heavy [sumi](/glossary/sumi)-black, their robes filled with flat fields of mineral pigment in the manner of Okinawan bingata stencil work. The print is almost certainly pulled on momigami, the crumpled [washi](/glossary/washi) whose granular surface is intrinsic to Watanabe's aesthetic. The narrative—divine authority over a storm—was a recurring Watanabe theme, sitting alongside his Madonnas, baptisms, and Last Suppers within the larger Biblical cycle.