Yatsuhashi X

Yatsuhashi — the eight-plank zigzag bridge celebrated in the Tales of Ise as a site where irises bloom in the marshes of Mikawa Province — provides Nakazawa with a literary and visual motif of considerable depth in the Japanese tradition. Ogata Kōrin's famous iris screens established yatsuhashi as an enduring emblem of that classical episode, and Nakazawa's series engages this accumulation of reference while translating it into the abstract vocabulary of intaglio printmaking. The tenth work likely represents the motif through structural suggestion rather than literal depiction: angular elements recalling the plank bridge's geometry, organic passages evoking iris leaves or water, and metal leaf introducing a luminosity associated with the golden ground of classical screen painting. The composite of etching and leaf connects this contemporary work to the materials of the screens it echoes.