Life

In this unfinished etching, Nakahashi cast a delicate flowering vine as a visual metaphor for life. Minutely etched words appear along the length of the vine and elsewhere, revealing a range of human attributes, both virtuous and otherwise. From top to bottom, the text reads, in part: pride, reflection, tyranny, carelessness, compromise, confusion, collapse, regret, vanity, confidence, love, hope, disappointment, desire. In the bottom margin of the plate, Nakahashi tested his etching needle

and practiced writing some of the words that appear within the composition. Because the etching technique reverses all imagery during printing, he would need to inscribe the words backward. The bottom plate margin would normally have been trimmed before printing.