Big gingko tree

The ginkgo, often planted at temple and shrine precincts and reaching prodigious age, is a subject that suits Tanaka's etching technique particularly well: the deeply furrowed bark, gnarled basal flares, and dense canopy structure invite the kind of patient, accumulated line-work for which his plates are known. This print likely centers a single mature ginkgo dominating the composition, with a small structure — a thatched outbuilding, gate, or stone foundation — placed at its base to register scale. Tanaka would have built the trunk through layered cross-hatching and selective burnishing to lift highlights along the bark ridges, while the foliage or bare winter branches articulate the plate's upper field. Trees, alongside houses and walls, form one of three principal pillars of his subject matter, and named individual trees recurred across his career as quasi-portraits — specific, located, and treated with the same documentary attention he extended to minka architecture.