Eastern Rain

Eastern Rain sits squarely within Kuroda's signature subject matter: figures negotiating rainfall, almost certainly with the umbrella-and-bicycle motif that has defined his international reputation since the 1980s. The print likely renders diagonal sheets of rain through fine parallel keyblock lines or sparse impressions cut directly into the woodblock, with bokashi gradation across the upper register to evoke a darkening sky. Umbrellas are typically printed as flat color discs, cyclists abstracted into silhouette, the wet street suggested by reflective horizontal bands. Kuroda's use of the baren on dampened washi produces the soft saturated color fields he favors for rain scenes, while the keyblock provides the kinetic linework that gives his rain prints their characteristic feeling of forward motion. The Eastern designation in the title points to his ongoing dialogue between Japanese subject matter and the Western printmaking techniques — etching, aquatint, mezzotint — he absorbed during his 1984 fellowship in the United States, a synthesis that runs throughout this series.