Yamaguchi Gen was one of the first Japanese print artists to embrace abstraction. These two prints may look similar at first, but the other print exhibits much brighter colors. Notice also how the spacing of the leaves and other elements changes between the prints. This reveals that the various shapes were manipulated separately by the artist. He produced the images by placing each leaf on cardboard, laying paper over it and printing before moving on to the next leaf or element. There were 23 different printing stages involved in the making of the final image.