Onjuku, Chiba (Chiba Onjuku)

Date:: 1950
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo

Edition:

Published by Watanabe Shozaburo

Source:

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

Onjuku in Chiba, published in 1950, depicts the small fishing village of Onjuku on the Pacific coast of the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture — a surf-exposed beach town that was also a historically significant cultural site where early Meiji-era foreign visitors (including President Ulysses S. Grant's party) landed. The Pacific coast at Onjuku, directly exposed to the open ocean swells, offered Hasui a more energetic marine subject than his sheltered bay views. The 1950 date places this among his active postwar documentation of Japan's coastal towns and fishing communities.