Hyôga (Aoshima)

The title Hyōga translates as glacier, and Aoshima is the small island off the southern coast of Miyazaki Prefecture in Kyushu, known for the geological formations called Oni no Sentakuita, or Devil's Washboard. The title suggests the print treats either the striated rock platforms of Aoshima's exposed seabed — which can resemble glacial features — or a winter view of the island. Kawanishi traveled within Japan and produced prints of locations beyond Kobe, and a Kyushu subject sits within this strand of his work, a counterpart to the home-port harbor scenes. Compositionally an Aoshima print would likely organize the island's distinctive ringed rock platforms into rhythmic horizontal bands, the sea and sky behind handled in his characteristic flat-color planes. The choice of subject reflects the sosaku-hanga interest in the Japanese landscape on its own terms — neither the famous places (meisho) of Edo-period series nor the foreign-influenced cityscape, but a regional natural feature treated through a modernist sensibility.