Drummaker

A second variant from the Showa Shokugyo Emaki series, this print returns to the taiko-shi subject from a different vantage. Where the first composition focuses on the act of stretching the hide, this version more likely captures a complementary stage of drum construction—lashing, tuning, or the application of the tack-rim that secures the membrane to the keyaki wood body. Wada Sanzo regularly produced paired or sequential views of the same occupation, allowing the seventy-two-print cycle to function as a narrative atlas rather than a simple inventory. The print employs the limited palette typical of the series: muted ochres, indigo, and the warm browns of unfinished wood. Carving is firm rather than ornamental, with key blocks doing most of the descriptive work and color blocks reserved for tonal mass. Within Wada's wider oeuvre—oil portraits, theatrical costume designs, and his later color-research treatises—the occupational prints stand as his most sustained meditation on the relationship between craft and identity in pre-war Japan.