Pines at Miho seashore - Miho no matsubara

This second view of Miho no Matsubara may represent a variant composition or a different season and light condition than its companion print, as Hasui frequently returned to celebrated locations across multiple visits and series. The pine forest at Miho extends approximately seven kilometers along the shore of Suruga Bay, and its trees—some centuries old—provided rich material for varied compositional approaches, from close views of individual trunks to broad horizontal prospects incorporating the bay and distant mountains. Shin-hanga prints of famous landscapes like Miho served both aesthetic and promotional purposes, circulating among Japanese tourists and the growing Western collector market for modern Japanese prints in the 1910s through 1940s. The washi surface and water-based pigments give these coastal scenes a luminosity difficult to achieve in Western printmaking.