Hayama- Iyo

This print depicts a scene at Hayama in Iyo Province, present-day Ehime Prefecture on the island of Shikoku, and represents one printing of a composition Hasui developed during his travels to western Japan. The Iyo coast along the Seto Inland Sea presented Hasui with a landscape markedly different from the mountain valleys and snow-covered towns of his better-known Tohoku subjects. Warm coastal light, distant islands, and flat or gently undulating terrain characterize the visual language of this region. Hasui's compositional method typically anchored such marine scenes with a foreground element—rocky shore, pine branch, or moored fishing vessel—to provide scale and direct the viewer's gaze across the water plane. The oban format and technically exacting color registration demanded by this composition would have been handled by Watanabe's specialist block-carvers and printers.