Forest of Melancholy (Yūutsu no hayashi)

Forest of Melancholy (Yuutsu no hayashi), a 1961 woodblock print in ink and color on paper, is held at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, where it was acquired during the years when American institutions were actively building holdings of contemporary Japanese printmaking. By 1961 Shima Tamami had been exhibiting with the Joryu Hanga Kyokai (Women's Print Association) for two years and was nearing the turning point of her career, the 1962 inclusion of her work in James A. Michener's landmark portfolio The Modern Japanese Print: An Appreciation. The Forest of Melancholy belongs to the cropped landscape subjects on which she developed her mature voice, alongside birds, horses, and still lifes. The composition deploys the bold exaggerated woodgrain that became her signature, letting the figure of the plank read across the trunks and ground as both texture and emotional climate, and balancing the wood's natural pattern against large flat shapes of restrained color. The result is at once modernist and rooted in the long Japanese tradition of decorative woodblock surface. Shima followed the jiga-jikoku-jizuri (self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed) principle that defined [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), taking complete responsibility for the print at every stage, and the Minneapolis impression preserves the careful registration and disciplined chromatic restraint that distinguish strong impressions of this Showa period woodblock print.