Iris No 125 — 花菖蒲 No 125

The one hundred twenty-fifth iris in Sugiura Kazutoshi's series shows the hana-shōbu at a stage of the project where each new composition must justify its existence against more than one hundred predecessors — a challenge that seems to have produced, in the higher-numbered entries, a willingness to push the compositional logic further toward abstraction. The flower remains identifiable, but the color relationships have become more daring, the compositional decisions more unconventional, as if Sugiura were deliberately testing how far he could take the subject from botanical representation while retaining its essential character.