Souvenirs of Travel, Third Series: Pacific Ocean, Boshu (Tabi miyage dai sanshu: Boshu Taikai)

Boshu refers to the Boso Peninsula (historically Awa and Kazusa provinces, present-day Chiba Prefecture), where the Pacific coastline is characterized by open ocean exposure, rocky headlands, and sweeping sea horizons quite different from the enclosed bays and inland waterways that dominate much of Hasui's landscape work. This print from the Tabi miyage dai sanshu (Third Series, c. 1922) depicts Taikai—the open sea—a compositional subject that gave Hasui an opportunity to work with horizontal banding: sea and sky in broad parallel registers, with the ocean rendered through layered blue-green and grey pigments and the sky through bokashi gradation from a lighter horizon to a deeper overhead. Wave forms along a Boso shore or the silhouette of fishing craft against open water would anchor the composition. The Pacific Ocean subject is relatively unusual within Hasui's largely river- and bay-focused coastal work, making this one of the more expansive seascape designs in the series.