Dried Fish

Dried Fish is a Japanese woodblock print by Toru Mabuchi catalogued through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org from the Japanese Art Open Database. The subject is one of the most distinctive in Mabuchi's still-life output, depicting preserved fish, a familiar element of the Japanese pantry and culinary tradition. Dried and salted fish appear across Japanese visual culture as emblems of everyday domestic life, and the subject also connects to broader East Asian still-life traditions in which prepared foodstuffs are treated as worthy of careful pictorial attention. Mabuchi handles the subject through the design vocabulary of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), with simplified contours, attentive surface texture, and flat color planes that emphasize the rhythm of the fish bodies. As a creative-print artist, Mabuchi designed, carved, and printed the blocks himself, and the resulting surface registers the deliberate texture of the woodblock together with carefully tuned color. The choice of dried fish as a subject signals Mabuchi's interest in everyday domestic objects, alongside the vases, fruit, and tabletop arrangements that make up much of his work. Dried Fish thereby contributes to a portrait of Japanese household life seen through the medium of the Japanese woodblock print. Its record in the Japanese Art Open Database, aggregated by ukiyo-e.org, provides a documented point of reference for collectors and researchers interested in Mabuchi's still-life practice and in the wider postwar sosaku-hanga tradition.