Mira sat back. On the tape box, she’d missed the faintest handwritten note on the inside flap. It read:
– It could be a mineral specimen from the “Rikitake collection” or a petrological sample (Rikitake is a known surname in earth science, e.g., geophysicist Tsuneji Rikitake). Rikitake No.119 Shoko Esumi.68
Shoko Esumi, though not widely documented in Western sources, represents a generation of Japanese artists who bridged sōsaku-hanga (creative print) principles with international abstraction. This piece captures the tension between tradition and innovation—a hallmark of late-1960s Japanese art. Mira sat back