Windswept seashore at Sawa

Windswept seashore at Sawa addresses one of the harder problems in woodblock landscape: rendering moving air on a static surface. Sasajima would likely solve this through directional carving -- gouge marks pulled along a single axis to suggest the press of wind across grass, water, or low coastal vegetation. The composition probably opens to a wide horizon with the sea as a flat field of restrained colour, perhaps with pale [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) at the meeting of water and sky. [Sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) work of this kind rejected the painterly atmosphere of commercial [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) seascapes in favour of a graphic vocabulary in which the cut block's marks are themselves the weather. The print belongs to Sasajima's engagement with Japanese landscape outside the famous-place tradition, taking a specific and locally named coastline rather than a celebrated meisho. As in all his work, the artist designed, carved, and pulled each block himself, in line with the principle of complete hand-craft that he had absorbed from Onchi Koshiro.