White Warrior, Shôwa period, dated 1964

White Warrior, Showa period, dated 1964, presents an armored warrior in white — a color associated in Japanese culture with purity, mourning, and the warrior's readiness for death. The white-armored warrior had powerful associations in Japanese military and theatrical tradition: the white garments of the defeated or doomed warrior, the purity of the warrior spirit that transcended the outcome of combat. Mori's 1964 rendering gave this symbolically charged subject the bold graphic treatment of his stencil technique, the white figure isolated against a contrasting ground with the same graphic authority he brought to all his warrior subjects.