Saint Nichiren

Nichiren (1222–1282) was the founding monk of Nichiren Buddhism, a Kamakura-period reformer who taught the primacy of the Lotus Sutra and was exiled to Sado Island for his polemics against rival schools. Hiratsuka's print likely depicts him in monastic robes — possibly seated in meditation, holding a sutra scroll, or in a hagiographic episode such as the Sado exile or the chanting of the daimoku. As a Buddhist subject, the work belongs to the strand of Hiratsuka's output that engaged Japanese religious iconography, alongside his many prints of temples and shrines. The high-contrast black-and-white woodcut technique lends itself to portraiture by reducing the figure to silhouette and carved line, evoking the engraved illustrations in older sutras and Buddhist texts. Hiratsuka cut and pulled the print himself on [washi](/glossary/washi), in keeping with [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga)'s principle of unitary authorship.