Shiragumo Waterfall - Hiroaki Takahashi Art Print

Shiragumo means white cloud, and Hiroaki Takahashi takes the name at its word. In this Shiragumo Waterfall of Nikko print, the falls boil over ink-black cliffs in heaped foam, thunderheads knocked sideways. Robin's-egg blue strokes comb through every billow. Nothing in the ravine sits still.

Takahashi trained under his uncle, the painter Matsumoto Fuko, and carried that brushwork patience into the Meiji-era woodblock. Each color needed its own block, stacked in register like layers of weather.

Takahashi drew this vision in 1910 for Watanabe Shozaburo, whose early prints sailed off with Western visitors. Tourists and pilgrims crowded Nikko then, drawn by the gilded Toshogu shrine. 

Two travelers stand on an ash-gray plank bridge, a straw hat bobbing beside a vermilion parasol blooming with sakura. That paper circle is the brightest ember in the gorge. Behind them a moss-green bluff crouches like a sleeping animal. Their kimono and yukata stay dry for now.

Fire from the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake consumed many of Takahashi's blocks, so each surviving sheet feels rescued. Hang this Japanese wall art in a space that needs an invigorating spray of life and a frozen moment of warm company.