Morning at Takamatsu

Takamatsu is the principal city of Kagawa Prefecture on Shikoku, facing the Seto Inland Sea. A morning view would depict the harbor or coastal landscape under early light, with the pale lavender and rose tones in the sky achieved through several bokashi passes by the printer. Morning and evening light states recur across Hasui's body of work because they offered the printer the chance to demonstrate atmospheric color gradation that distinguished shin-hanga from the flatter color schemes of nineteenth-century ukiyo-e. The Inland Sea, with its scattered islands and protected waters, was a recurring travel subject for Hasui and other shin-hanga artists in the 1920s and 1930s, when domestic tourism was expanding and publishers were producing print series tied to specific regions. The print would have been published by Watanabe Shozaburo, Hasui's principal collaborator throughout his career, and falls within the meisho-e tradition of named-place views.