Good Boy™

Owls, the woodblock prints by Japanese artist Iwao Akiyama (1921–2014).

Iwao Akiyama was born in 1921 in the Oita Prefecture, and began his artistic career by painting in oils. He then turned to engraving, and ultimately to woodblock printing. From 1959 to 1966 Iwao studied with the famous Japanese print artist Munakata Shiko

(1903-1975).

Akiyama Iwao's woodblock prints convey a sense of roughness, of being unfinished. He uses Japanese paper in which there are tiny shavings of bark - indications that the paper is handmade and incorporates the original fibres. Making a calculated departure from elegance, from any attempt to beautify or refine the forms of his subjects, Akiyama presents them as black blots, without details and with no defined outline. All this gives his work an effect of folk-art, naive and direct.

In China and Japan the owl is a symbol of treachery. In Japanese folk-tales he is described as devouring his parents. Conversely, the crow is thought to be the messenger of the gods, a symbol of good fortune and an emblem of respect for parents - an important tenet in Japanese tradition. There is a Japanese aphorism which says that "the children of the crow find food for their parents". In Akiyama's prints, the owl is not at all sinister, but innocent, playful and poetic, and his relation to the crow is full of humour, in absolute contradiction to his "reputation" in folklore.

The owl is a bird of night, dormant by day. In two of Akiyama's prints he watches, with half-closed eyes, as a crow pecks at the eaves of a house in the middle of a hot day. From the owl's point of view, the crow's behaviour (or that of any other creature at midday) is evidence of stupidity. The poem by Issa inscribed on the work - "A hot day/he pecks at the eaves/ Silly crow" - helps us to understand this. Crows often show a tendency to imitate other creatures. Perhaps, in this instance, he is imitating a woodpecker searching for food beneath the bark of a tree. Obviously, imitating the action will not produce the desired results, so that Issa sees him as a simpleton - and so does the owl!

In another print the owl has "drunk the bitter drop" surrounded by new leaves which have fallen off the trees. Obviously, fresh leaves don't fall off trees, because they have only just sprouted. It is simply an illusion, caused by the owl's drunkenness or our assumptions. We know the owl is drunk because of the title - "Slightly drunk" - and Taneda Santoka's poem (Slightly drunk/ young leaves/fall) at the top of the print. But one has only to look at the owl's rolling eyes to realize what a shameful state he is in. Even though titles and inscriptions help us to understand, it is certainly possible to identify the owl as professor, prophet, musketeer, deity, or sage in Akiyama's prints unaided, because each owl has its own personality and character.