Hisshutsu

"Hisshutsu" — meaning "must emerge" or "inevitable arising" — is a title with both technical and philosophical resonances. In printmaking, the act of printing (hisshutsu) describes the image's emergence from block to paper; philosophically, the term suggests the inevitable arising of phenomena from their causes. This 1937 print, in its title alone, collapses the technical and the metaphysical into a single word, making the act of printmaking itself an image of Buddhist emergence. It is characteristic of Munakata's capacity to find cosmic significance in the physical process of carving and printing.