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Shigure
“Emptiness is form, emptiness is form, emptiness is form,” I muttered as I held the chisel. I carved the board, occasionally saying, “Form is emptiness.”
The mountain ranges visible from the Kofu Basin were magnificent. You could see many of Japan’s famous mountains. Among them, Kaikomagatake showed its masculine and majestic appearance. It’s nice to climb Kaikomagatake, but it’s also special to look at it.
At the end of autumn, I was driving along the road next to the Sanbunichi spring in Koizumi, Hokuto City. On my right, I could see Kaikomagatake and Nokogirigatake, which was following it. Their silhouettes were clearly drawn against the autumn sky. I stopped the car and copied their shapes with a pencil.
On the way back, I remembered the sketch I had made and the mountain I had seen earlier, and I thought to myself, “Mountains are not just mountains; there is a mountain because of the sky. The sky is not just sky; there is earth and there is heaven. There is heaven and there is earth. Heaven and earth exist as one and the same.” I came home with such vague thoughts.
When I first started woodblock printmaking, I aimed to create multicolored woodblock prints. I worked hard to create works while being conscious of the composition, color scheme, and overlap of colors. As I made a few pieces, I gradually became attracted to the appeal of ink as a paint. I began to realize how excellent ink is, which has been around since ancient times, and such obvious things. I wanted to create a work using only ink. When I thought about this, the scene of Kaikoma and Nokogiri came to mind.
When I started making the work, I tried hard not to record Kaikoma and Nokogiri as a landscape, but to express an invisible world that is one and the same. I divided the top and bottom equally. Even if you look at it upside down, you can’t tell which is the mountain and which is the sky. However, that alone was not enough. A thin line that connects heaven and earth was naturally required.
So the title I first gave it was “Empty is color.” But that was too grand and too far from the picture, and I was worried that I was not expressing it as I had intended, so I changed the title to “Shigure”.