Dawn II 1989

Dawn II, dated 1989, indicates a sequel within a series concerned with daybreak, the emergence of light, or the transitional moment between night and morning. Atmospheric subjects of this kind are well suited to mokuhanga, where the technique of [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) — the gradient achieved by applying pigment unevenly to the block and pulling a soft transition through the [baren](/glossary/baren) — can render the gradual lightening of sky without hard contour. The dawn theme has a deep precedent in Japanese pictorial tradition, from Edo-period [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) depicting famous places at first light to the atmospheric landscapes of the early-twentieth-century [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) school. By 1989 the subject had been carried into more abstract registers by [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) and post-sosaku artists, who treated dawn less as a topographic moment than as a chromatic event. Dawn II's late-Showa date and its position within a numbered sequence place it within this continuing reduction of landscape to color and atmosphere.