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 palette typical of shin-hanga work. Black-and-white mokuhanga has a long history — from early Buddhist printing through the sumizuri-e of pre-1740s 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 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 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.