Sad Day (Kanashii hi)

Printed in 1957 as edition 21 of 50, this color woodblock renders grief in abstract visual terms. The Japanese subtitle "Kanashii hi" translates directly as "sad day," and the emotional directness of this title is unusual in Masaji's catalog, which more often favors philosophical or elemental concepts. The print likely employs muted, heavy tonal values, perhaps grays, deep blues, or browns, that carry the weight of the named emotion without illustrating a specific narrative of loss. The edition size of fifty matches that of "Empty Day" from the same year, suggesting these two emotionally charged prints were conceived and produced as part of a related group. Masaji was forty years old in 1957, and these mid-career works display a willingness to address interior emotional states with an unflinching directness that his more conceptual titles sometimes veil.