Oga Peninsula (Akita)

This colour woodblock print of March 1939, formerly in the Sekino Family Collection and now documented in the Japanese Art Open Database, depicts the Oga Peninsula on the Sea of Japan coast of Akita Prefecture — the dramatic volcanic finger of land that projects westward from the northern Akita coastline and that has been a destination for Japanese travellers, pilgrims, and namahage ritual specialists for centuries. Katsuhira Tokushi's composition treats the peninsula's rugged cliffs and coastal village settlements with the careful structural draughtsmanship and restrained colour palette characteristic of his late-1930s landscape work. The print belongs to the artist's broader project of documenting Akita Prefecture as a coherent regional subject across the late 1930s and early 1940s, and shows the more straightforwardly topographical side of his work alongside the festival and domestic subjects for which he is better known. The Sekino provenance refers to the Sekino Jun'ichirō family of Akita prints, indicating the print's circulation among the close community of postwar sōsaku-hanga collectors in Japan.