Kumoi-Zakura (Kumoi Cherry Trees)

Based on his watercolor painting of 1904, this woodblock print by Hiroshi Yoshida shows a dreamlike, misty moonlit scene of two young women viewing the famed spring cherry blossoms at Mount Yoshino, east of Osaka.

Kumoi Cherry Trees is printed in the largest format Yoshida ever used for his woodblocks. Printing an image of this size is very difficult and requires a team of printers. It is especially tricky to get the correct registration (the alignment of the different woodblocks for each color). For this image the blossoms of the cherry tree had to be printed in three sections, requiring three different impressions to get them to align perfectly with the branches.