Moss No. 4

The fourth print in Masaji's Moss series, created in 1958 using ink and color on paper, advances the exploration of this organic subject through abstract means. By the fourth iteration, Masaji would have been working through specific visual problems: how to render the quality of slow encroachment, the way moss colonizes a stone surface grain by grain, without resorting to literal depiction. The 1958 date places this print in the same productive year as "Evening Gloom of Japan No. 3," suggesting that Masaji was working across multiple thematic series simultaneously. The ink-and-color woodblock technique allows for both dark, saturated areas that evoke the rich green of living moss and lighter, drier passages that suggest stone or bark surfaces not yet fully colonized.