Prints by Jinbo Tomoyo, 2nd Series: Fragrance (Jinbo Tomoyo Hangashu, Dai-Nishu: Bikun)

Prints by Jinbo Tomoyo, 2nd Series: Fragrance (Jinbo Tomoyo Hangashu, Dai-Nishu: Bikun) belongs to a self-published portfolio by Tomoyo Jinbo, an artist working in the tradition of contemporary mokuhanga, the modern incarnation of the Japanese woodblock print. The title Bikun, literally a fragrant or wafting scent, signals the suite's interest in atmosphere and sensation rather than narrative subject matter, placing it firmly within the introspective vein of postwar Japanese printmaking that prizes mood over story. As a second series of personal prints, the portfolio reads as a deliberate artistic statement: a self-organized body of work in which Jinbo could refine a personal vocabulary of figure, gesture, and color across a coherent group of images rather than a single sheet. The handling typical of Jinbo's mokuhanga combines softly bokashi-graded tonal fields with crisp keyblock outlines, an approach that follows directly from Edo-period printing technique while pushing toward a quieter, more contemporary sensibility. As with much modern Japanese woodblock work, the print is built up from multiple hand-carved blocks aligned by kento registration marks, each block contributing a single color or shading pass, and printed by hand with a baren on dampened washi. This emphasis on craft, on the slow accretion of impressions, gives Bikun its characteristic sense of stillness. The cataloging of this impression by Scholten Japanese Art and its presence in the ukiyo-e.org image archive confirms its circulation among collectors of contemporary mokuhanga, where Jinbo is appreciated for sensitive figural studies and atmospheric color. For viewers approaching the Japanese woodblock tradition through its living practitioners, this Fragrance series offers an accessible entry into how shin-hanga lyricism and modern self-publication continue to shape the medium today.