Cicada (439)

A study of a single cicada — semi in Japanese — this print likely isolates the insect against a plain or minimally suggested ground, drawing on the long East Asian tradition of insect subjects in painting and printmaking. The cicada carries dense seasonal and literary association in Japan, its summer cry a recurring image in waka and haiku, and its translucent wings, banded thorax, and prominent eyes make it a demanding subject for woodblock rendering. The keyblock must record the fine venation of the wings and the segmented joints of the legs, while subsequent color blocks suggest iridescence and the subtle gradient of body color from head to abdomen. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) printing is well suited to the soft tonal transitions across the wing surface. Within Tanaka's broader attention to rural life — minka, country lanes, stone walls — a cicada study extends that observational discipline to a smaller scale, recording one of the seasonal markers that animates the countryside he spent his career documenting.