"Sparrow Dance (Renjaku), from the series Gekkô Zuihitsu (Gekkô's Miscellany)"

From the series Gekkō Zuihitsu (Gekkō's Miscellany), this kacho-e depicts renjaku—the Bohemian waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus), a winter visitor to Japan whose Japanese name, meaning linked sparrows, reflects their habit of clustering in close-packed flocks. Despite the English translation as sparrow dance, the subject is almost certainly waxwings in animated group movement, a natural phenomenon with strong decorative potential. Gekko likely shows multiple birds in varied postures—perching, in mid-flight, wings spread—arranged against a spare background of winter branches or berries, using the birds' warm chestnut and yellow coloring to animate the composition. The Zuihitsu series gave Gekko latitude for personal subjects outside the commercial pressures of his war and historical print work, and the close observation evident in his bird studies reflects the shaseiga (sketching-from-life) influence that ran through Meiji naturalist print-making. Bokashi gradations define the birds' soft plumage and create tonal variation across the washi ground.