Tombo (Dragonfly) - Kirifuri

The title Kirifuri references Kirifuri Falls in Nikko, a site depicted in earlier Japanese landscape printmaking by artists including Hiroshige. Hiroshima locates a single dragonfly within or before this misty waterfall setting, drawing on the mezzotint medium's capacity to render fine atmospheric gradations and the velvet shadows associated with falling water. The plate would be rocked to a uniform dark ground, then selectively burnished and scraped to reveal lighter passages — the translucent wings of the tombo, the spray of the cascade. Insects recur across Hiroshima's editions of the late 2000s and 2010s, in which he extends the seasonal sensibility of earlier kacho-e (bird-and-flower print) traditions into intaglio. The pairing of a small living subject with an atmospheric ground rooted in a named meisho is characteristic of his independent print practice from this period.