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Sawai combines contrasting imagery of Eastern erotica and Western religious themes. Noboru Sawai is known for combining themes, images, and techniques from Eastern and Western art into his varied and often challenging prints. Sawai is of Japanese descent but lives and works in Canada where he was raised. His work is often erotic and his prints vary from incredible detail to loose outlines. Sawai is an inventive artist working from the Sosaku Hanga school but aspires to reconcile the tendencies of the east and the west. This goal has existed since the Meiji Era but instead of trying to hold onto the past or Japanese tradition Sawai tries to reinvent it and combine it with Western themes which force the viewer to question tradition, culture, imagery, and religion. In this work Sawai combines Gustave Courbet's modernist masterpiece Burial at Ornans, 1848 with a depiction of Hindu god Krishna and his human consort Radha in an erotic moment. The two seem oppositional. On one hand the viewer is presented with realist masterpiece from France which elevated the lower rural classes to history with its size and composition. On the other there is a circular insert from Hindu religious myth which addresses sexuality and religious legend. Combined they question cultural practices and beliefs related to death, class, sexuality, and popular imagery as well as formal techniques like printmaking, etching and modern art practices (including abstraction and portraiture).