Boatman song

A lonely boatman's song drifts across still water in this poetic composition by Takehisa Yumeji, the printmaker working in the territory between illustration and fine art that he made his own during the Taisho era. Yumeji was equally a poet and a visual artist, and his prints frequently carry this dual character — images that suggest the emotional content of a lyric poem even without words. The boatman's song implies distance, night, and the particular melancholy of music heard across water, all signature moods in Yumeji's imaginative world.