Black Cat Looking Back, Furikaeru (5)

This print belongs to Nishida's extended series of cat studies and depicts a black cat caught in the act of turning its head — the furikaeru (振り返る), or backward glance, a compositional gesture with deep roots in Japanese art, most famously associated with bijin-ga figures pausing mid-stride. By transposing this motif onto a domestic animal, Nishida draws a quiet parallel between human and feline comportment. The cat's dark form, likely rendered through dense ink-black pigment applied across a carefully prepared block, would create a strong silhouette against a restrained ground. The numeral in the title indicates this is the fifth in a subseries, suggesting Nishida explored the same pose across varying moods, colorways, or backgrounds. Precise gradation work — bokashi — may soften the edges of the figure, lending the cat a sense of three-dimensional weight characteristic of accomplished mokuhanga.