Thursday, December 4, 2014

How do you paint the wind?




This is a scene on the Tokaido Road, where our first book about Seikei, The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn, begins. This is near one of the "stations," or rest stops, on the road. The artist is one of Japan's greatest print-makers: Hiroshige. He published a book of such scenes called Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road. Here we don't see the town itself, but a scene outside the road, where a bridge crosses the Mie River. "Painting the wind" may sound impossible, but Hiroshige does it by using the billowing cloak of the man at right, the outstretched branches of the willow tree, and finally the man chasing after his hat. We're showing a close-up up the running man, just because we like it so much.
We're about to go to India for a trip, so we might not be able to post again until January. Enjoy the holidays! Give somebody one of Seikei's books as a present!

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