Higashi-cho, Hirakata (Hirakata Higashi-cho)
by Kawase Hasui
- Date:
- 1945
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Format:
- Oban
- Publisher:
- Watanabe Shozaburo
by Kawase Hasui
Edition period is the primary value driver for Hasui prints. Pre-war lifetime editions with the Watanabe copyright seal (A through D types) consistently achieve 3–5× the price of posthumous reprints of the same design. Condition is the second key factor — unfaded colors, full margins, and absence of foxing or staining are essential. Subject matter (snow > rain > night > other) provides a further modifier within each edition tier. This postwar design (1946–1957) bears the small 6mm J-seal on lifetime impressions — authentic but from the artist's final decade, when block quality had declined from peak period.
Higashi-cho in Hirakata, published in 1945, depicts the eastern residential district of Hirakata city along the Yodo River corridor in Osaka Prefecture — a traditional townscape in the intermediate zone between Kyoto and Osaka. The 1945 date gives this quiet residential subject a distinctive wartime context: produced in the final year of the Pacific War, the composition focuses on the preserved domestic architecture of a small city, its traditional wooden houses and neighborhood streets representing the everyday civilian life continuing alongside the larger catastrophe. The undated quality (no tags, no series) gives it a documentary plainness.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Higashi-cho, Hirakata (Hirakata Higashi-cho) was created by Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水) in 1945.
Higashi-cho, Hirakata (Hirakata Higashi-cho) was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1945).
Higashi-cho, Hirakata (Hirakata Higashi-cho) depicts landscapes and village scenes.
