Yamaguchi satellite communications centre

Tokuriki's depiction of the Yamaguchi satellite communications station is an unusual subject for a traditional mokuhanga artist and reflects the wider postwar interest among Japanese printmakers in the visual forms of contemporary infrastructure. The Yamaguchi Earth Station, opened in the late 1960s in Yamaguchi prefecture, was an early Japanese satellite ground facility, dominated by parabolic dish antennas trained on geostationary satellites. The print most likely centers on one or more of these dishes against an open sky and surrounding hills, the geometric forms of the antennas providing circular and elliptical shapes that translate cleanly into the flat color fields of woodblock printing. Such modern subjects placed Tokuriki within the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) current that engaged with industrial and technological motifs while continuing to use carved cherry blocks, brushed pigments, and [baren](/glossary/baren)-pressed impressions on [washi](/glossary/washi). Within his output, estimated by biographers at five thousand or more prints, works of this kind document the breadth of his subject range alongside his more familiar temples, shrines, and seasonal landscapes.