Clear Autumn Day

Clear Autumn Day evokes akibare, the crisp, cloudless weather that follows the autumn equinox in central and northern Japan. The print likely organizes a panoramic view of harvested rice fields, hedgerows, and a far line of mountains under an even blue sky, structured by the deep horizontal planes Ohtsu favors for open countryside. Sky bokashi from a saturated upper blue to a paler band at the horizon is characteristic of his treatment of clear-weather landscapes, achieved by selectively dampening the block before printing. The middle ground typically carries the warmest colors — the ochres of cut rice straw, the russet of persimmon foliage, the gray-brown of farmhouse timber — held in tension against the cool sky. Within the broader arc of Ohtsu's work, prints titled around weather and season rather than a named place function as distillations of the agricultural calendar he documents repeatedly, where the time of year is itself the subject.