SHISHIODOSHI

"Shishiodoshi" by Tanaka Ryohei is a contemporary etching whose title refers to the traditional Japanese bamboo deer-scarer, a length of hollow bamboo pivoted on a fulcrum that fills with water from a small spout, then tips and strikes a stone with a sharp, hollow tock before swinging back to fill again. Catalogued through ukiyo-e.org from a Western dealer record, the print is undated in its source entry, but the subject sits comfortably within the garden and rural Japanese landscape themes Tanaka Ryohei (1933-2019) pursued throughout his career as one of postwar Japan's leading intaglio printmakers. The shishiodoshi originated as a practical device for frightening deer and wild boar from farmland and only later migrated into the temple and tea-garden vocabulary, where it became prized for the irregular percussion that punctuates the quiet of a garden. Tanaka's etching idiom is ideally suited to such a subject: the patient build-up of bitten copperplate lines describes wet bamboo, damp stone, ferns, and moss in fine graphic detail while the surrounding paper holds the silence between strokes. There is no fabricated narrative imposed on the scene; the artist's restraint lets the device's mechanism and its setting carry the meaning. Information about edition number, dimensions, or the publishing print studio is not provided in the source record and is therefore not asserted here. The work exemplifies Tanaka's reputation for translating familiar Japanese garden motifs into a quiet, contemplative graphic language drawn from his deep engagement with European intaglio traditions.