Cosmos No. 9

The final number visible in Sugiura's Cosmos sequence, this ninth variant likely refines the formal vocabulary established across the preceding prints — flat color massing, isolated stems, suppressed background. As an autumn flower introduced from Mexico in the Meiji period, the cosmos sits at the boundary between Japan's classical floral repertoire and its modern garden vocabulary, and the artist's repeated engagement with it is itself a quietly contemporary gesture. The compositional formula in this series typically combines two or three stems set diagonally across the sheet, blooms turned partly toward the viewer to display their flat ray-petal structure, and a narrow band of foliage providing tonal counterpoint. In keeping with the artist's wider practice — paralleled in his Iris and Peony series — emphasis falls on surface refinement and the careful weighing of empty ground against printed image. Such restraint links Sugiura to the post-Yoshida generation of flower printmakers who kept faith with [kacho-e](/glossary/kacho-e) subject matter while moving away from its narrative scaffolding toward decorative abstraction.