Manazuru, Izu Province

Manazuru, Izu Province is a Japanese woodblock print connected with Ei-Q (Ei-Kyu, 1911-1960), the pioneering Showa-period avant-garde artist active in surrealist photography, abstract painting, and printmaking through the Free Artists Association (Jiyu Bijutsuka Kyokai). Manazuru is a small coastal peninsula extending into Sagami Bay from the Izu region, long celebrated in Japanese landscape tradition for its pine-fringed cliffs, fishing harbor, and views toward the Pacific. In the modern period it became a recurring subject for artists exploring regional Japan, and prints depicting Manazuru appear within the broader Showa-era effort to chronicle named places through both [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) and [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) channels. Ei-Q's treatment, preserved through the Harvard Art Museums record indexed at [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org (HUAM-CARP07164), participates in this tradition while inflecting it with a modernist visual sensibility shaped by his work in photography and abstraction. The composition reads landscape through simplified planes and selective contrast rather than the densely detailed naturalism of earlier ukiyo-e views, registering Manazuru as much through atmosphere and structure as through topographic accuracy. As a Japanese woodblock print, it sits within Ei-Q's expansion of his graphic practice beyond the photogram and abstract canvas, demonstrating how the Showa-period avant-garde maintained an active dialogue with traditional print formats and regional subject matter. The Harvard provenance, accessible via ukiyo-e.org's aggregated catalogue, situates the work within an institutional collection that documents twentieth-century Japanese prints.