Japanese Game of go

A second variant of the go-player subject from the Showa Shokugyo Emaki, this print likely reframes the game from a different vantage — a closer view of a single player studying the board, or a contrasting moment in the same match. Wada Sanzo often worked through occupations across multiple compositions, returning to a profession to capture different gestures, postures, or stages of the working day, and the go player evidently warranted such reconsideration. The print retains the series' standard format: a moderate sheet size, a limited but deliberate palette, and the unembellished line work characteristic of mid-Showa shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga production. Areas of bokashi gradation may be used sparingly to model the body or the surrounding tatami, while the goban itself remains a flat schematic field. By devoting two designs to a single trade, Wada underlines his project's ethnographic ambition — treating professional go not as a pastime but as one of the disciplined, transmitted occupations of Showa Japan, deserving the same attention he gave to ironworkers, midwives, and stonemasons.