Depicting snow in woodcuts White inks were not usually employed
in printing Japanese woodcuts, so snow was commonly depicted by
leaving areas of the paper blank. Snowflakes were usually
created by carving nicks out of the surface of the colour
blocks, so that flecks of paper appear like flakes of snow. Here
nicks have been carved out of the blocks used to print the man's
hair so that it appears as though snowflakes are falling in
front of him. Exceptionally, in special luxury editions or
private commissions, white pigment was flicked onto the surface
of the paper to create extra snowflakes after the colours had
been printed. The white pigment is whiter than the colour of the
paper, so the snowflakes stand out against the snow. This
pigment was traditionally made from seashells and known as gofun
(calcium carbonate), but lead based whites were also used, as in
this example. The flicked pigment cannot be precisely
controlled, so the effect is random in each impression, but in
this example the pigment was brushe