White-eyes and persimmon

White-eyes and Persimmon is a [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) Japanese woodblock print by Soseki Komori, a [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) designer whose body of work centers on closely observed bird-and-flower compositions in the tradition revived by Ohara Koson and the Watanabe workshop. The image pairs Japanese white-eyes (mejiro), small olive-green songbirds with a distinctive white ring around the eye, with the ripening fruit of a persimmon (kaki) tree. The pairing is a classical motif in Japanese painting and printmaking: white-eyes are drawn to the soft, sugary flesh of late-autumn persimmons, and the encounter between bird and fruit became a shorthand for the brief abundance of the season just before winter. Komori's design exploits the chromatic logic of that pairing, setting the warm orange of the persimmon against the cool olive-green and yellow of the birds and the muted bark of the branch. The shin-hanga (new prints) movement, in which Komori worked in the early twentieth century, preserved the four-person collaboration of Edo-period [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) (designer, carver, printer, publisher) while updating kacho-e for contemporary collectors who valued naturalist accuracy alongside decorative balance. In White-eyes and Persimmon, the keyblock outline is restrained, with the birds' silhouettes carried more by color and [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation than by heavy line, and the persimmons are modeled with subtle tonal shifts that suggest their waxy skin and weight on the branch. As a Japanese woodblock print, the work is a representative example of Soseki Komori's quiet, seasonally attentive approach to bird-and-flower subjects, and it is documented through ukiyo-e.org's aggregated catalogue of Japanese print holdings.