Thunder God

Thunder God (Raijin), printed in 1969 as a stencil, presents the deity of thunder and lightning who appeared with his companion Wind God (Fujin) in one of the most celebrated pairings in Japanese religious art — most famously in Tawaraya Sotatsu's 17th-century screen paintings. Raijin's circular arrangement of drums, his fierce expression, and his dynamic pose in the act of striking the thunder drums made him one of the most compositionally engaging of Japanese divine figures. Mori's stencil technique was ideally suited to capturing the bold graphic energy of this subject.