#41 Kasose 1.89

Kasose refers to a place — likely the Kasose River or an associated locality — and the appended numeric identifier locates the plate within Hayashi's 1989 sequence. Tagged abstract, the etching likely presents a field of mark rather than a recognizable view, with topographic reference reduced to gesture. Made two years after Hayashi's M.F.A. at Tokyo Geidai, the work belongs to a formative phase in which the artist was establishing the small-format intaglio vocabulary he would refine for the next several decades. Prints from this period tend to combine etched and drypoint line with sparing aquatint; surfaces are typically printed on gampi, whose translucency softens the contour of the plate impression. The numbering convention "#41" indicates Hayashi's sequential cataloguing of plates across his entire output — a system he has maintained continuously, allowing each etching to be located within the longer arc of the studio. The Kasose group reads as an early sustained engagement with named place as the trigger for abstract investigation, a strategy that recurs in later "Considering" series.