Ninetailed Fox

Ninetailed Fox draws on the kitsune of Japanese folklore — the shape-shifting fox spirit whose nine tails mark it as ancient and powerful, a figure that recurs in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) from Kuniyoshi onward. Kristensen's mokuhanga interpretation likely renders the creature with the flat, decorative color planes that define his contemporary practice, where the registered impressions of multiple cherrywood blocks build form through outline and tonal area rather than Western shading. Working on [washi](/glossary/washi) with water-based pigments applied by [baren](/glossary/baren), prints of this type tend to exploit the absorbency of the paper to produce saturated, matte fields against which a single subject reads with poster-like clarity. The image fits Kristensen's broader engagement with Japanese visual traditions — folklore, landscape, urban iconography — filtered through a sensibility shaped by his Danish origin and his decades of residence in Japan. Like the Tokyo Tower series that built on Hokusai's Fuji views, this print treats inherited subject matter as a starting point for a deliberately contemporary, often wry reading rather than as material for reverent reproduction.