Series Of black and white

The title refers to a body of monochrome prints Toshi Yoshida produced using only sumi ink on washi, eschewing the polychrome [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) palette typical of [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) work. Black-and-white mokuhanga has a long history — from early Buddhist printing through the sumizuri-e of pre-1740s [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) — and twentieth-century Japanese printmakers including Munakata Shiko revived the form for its graphic immediacy. Toshi's monochrome series demonstrates the carver's draftsmanship without color's mediating effect: tonal range comes from line density, key-block detail, and [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation in ink alone. This output marks an experimental strand of his career, where he stepped away from the Yoshida studio's signature atmospheric color and engaged the formal vocabulary of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) modernism. The work bridges two threads of his career: traditional landscape subjects on one side, and the abstract compositions he pursued from the late 1950s onward on the other.