Something a bit different for this one ... the image is actually not Japanese in origin at all. Sadako and I had been in China a few months before this, trying to find a workshop to do the mounting work for the scroll-size print that had been my work for the previous year. While we were souvenir shopping I had come across some kiri-e (silhouette pictures) in a market.

They were not woodblock prints, but made by cutting black paper with knives and scissors, and as soon as I saw this one, I immediately tabbed it for the New Year print that I would soon be making.