Great image of the Buddha

The title refers to a daibutsu, almost certainly one of the monumental cast-bronze Buddha figures Hiratsuka studied repeatedly — most likely the seated Vairocana of Todai-ji in Nara or the open-air Amida of Kotoku-in in Kamakura. Working in his characteristic black-key mokuhanga manner, Hiratsuka would have reduced the colossus to its essential masses: the half-lidded eyes, the urna at the brow, the spiraled rakuhotsu curls of the hair, and the deep folds of the kasaya robe falling across the lap in mudra. The print exploits the contrast between dense black areas pulled from heavily inked blocks and the unworked white of the [washi](/glossary/washi) to suggest both the metallic patina of the bronze and the deep shadow of the temple hall. Devotional sculpture was a sustained subject across his eight-decade career, and works such as this anchor his reputation as the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) movement's principal interpreter of Japanese Buddhist statuary in print.