July July (4)

July is the height of summer in Japan and the month in which lotus flowers come into bloom in temple ponds across the country, a seasonal association that anchors this fourth July July sheet within Tokitoh's broader engagement with single-flower studies. The title's reduplication suggests the sustained heat and stillness of midsummer rather than a specific date, and the print accordingly favours a slowed register: a single subject rendered through accumulated translucent layers of pale grey, soft blue, and the faintest green, with no narrative framing or seasonal staffage. The motif was drawn directly by the artist's hand rather than transferred from a photograph, which gives Tokitoh's flowers a slightly unfixed quality at their edges where the maker's hand registers more strongly than any mechanical reproduction would allow. Within her wider catalogue the July prints sit alongside her named flower series — Lotus, White Lotus Flower, Calla — as part of a consistent meditation on isolated botanical subjects observed in close, near-monochrome tonal range.