Saint Nichiren

Although he always began his print projects by producing a drawing of his design, Hiratsuka Un’ichi also changed his designs while he was carving, as if drawing with the knife. He is regarded as the best-trained block carver in the creative print movement and was the first printmaker to receive the Order of Cultural Merit from the Japanese government in 1970. The subject of this print is Saint Nichiren (1222–1282), the founder of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism in Japan, which takes the Lotus Sutra as the core of its teachings and promotes the belief that all humans can achieve enlightenment in their lifetimes. Hiratsuka studied the teachings of Nichiren when he was young and intended to make 10,000 impressions of this image. “If I cannot finish while I am alive,” he once said, “I will finish in heaven.”