Katsuura Inlet, Kii (Kii Katsuura)

Date:: 1951
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo
Edition:: Published by Watanabe Shozaburo
Source:: Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

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.

Pre-war lifetime edition (Watanabe seal, 1926–1944): $1,000–$4,000
Postwar lifetime edition (J-seal, 1946–1957): $400–$1,500
Posthumous/Heisei edition (seal K/I, 1957–present): $150–$600

Description

Katsuura Inlet in Kii, published in 1951, depicts the natural harbor at Katsuura on the southeastern Kii Peninsula coast — a deep U-shaped inlet carved into the rocky Pacific shoreline of present-day Wakayama Prefecture, sheltered from the open ocean by its headlands. Katsuura's deep sheltered bay, ringed by forested cliffs and fronted by the Pacific horizon, gives the composition both the intimate enclosure of a sheltered harbor and the implied expansiveness of the open ocean beyond. The 1951 date places this among Hasui's postwar explorations of the Kii Peninsula's dramatic coastline.