Glaukos, Shôwa period, dated 1965?

Glaukos — the sea-deity of Greek mythology, a fisherman who ate a magic herb and became immortal, his body transformed for eternal life in the ocean — appears in this undated version as one of Hagiwara's Showa-period Greek Mythology series subjects. The marine deity's transformation story — the sea swallowing and changing a mortal — resonated with Hagiwara's interest in transformation as both mythological event and artistic subject. The carved surface of the woodblock becomes the vehicle for the transformative process the myth described.