Kaijin — "sea god" or "sea spirit" — appears in this 1937 print as one of the supernatural beings inhabiting Munakata's sacred cosmology. His engagement with Shinto deities and Buddhist figures was not doctrinal in any orthodox sense but deeply personal: he absorbed the sacred imagery of Japan's religious traditions and transformed it through the pressure of his own visionary intensity. The sea god as subject aligned his religious imagination with his origins in the coastal Aomori region of northern Japan, where the sea was both livelihood and myth.
1960
Woodblock print
Shôwa period, 1926-1989
Woodblock print
1939-68
Woodblock print
1939 (printed 1955)
Woodblock print
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Kaijin was created by Shiko Munakata (棟方志功) in 1937.
Kaijin depicts figures, religious, and mythology.
