Uchisange, Okayama

View of Uchisange, the central district of Okayama City in former Bizen Province on the Inland Sea. As with the Kamezaki subject, the medium is recorded here as etching rather than mokuhanga, suggesting an intaglio departure from Hasui's habitual woodblock practice or an attribution that may merit further verification against the principal Hasui catalogues. The likely composition depicts the moat and stone walls of Okayama Castle, the surrounding government buildings of the Meiji and Taisho era, or a street scene leading toward Korakuen, the Edo-period stroll garden adjoining the castle. Hasui's Okayama subjects fit within his programme of documenting the regional cities of western Japan, alongside prints of Hiroshima, Matsue and Yamaguchi. Whether produced as woodblock or copperplate, the visual language characteristic of Hasui shapes the design — a single architectural anchor against a softly atmospheric sky, low human figures providing scale, and recession achieved through overlapping planes rather than linear perspective. The print belongs to the Sanyo and Sanin sketching journeys that supplied source material across his later career.