The Mouth of the Banyu River — 馬入川 川口

The Banyu River (馬入川) drains the Sagami plain in Kanagawa Prefecture, emptying into Sagami Bay near Hiratsuka, and its wide, silted mouth was a familiar subject in meisho-e print traditions referencing the Tokaido coastal landscape. This woodblock print depicts the estuary where river current meets tidal water — a compositional situation favoring broad horizontal registers of land, water, and sky. Hasegawa likely employed graduated bokashi in the sky and water passages to convey the diffuse light characteristic of coastal lowlands. Fishing boats or small craft near the sandbar would anchor the foreground, giving human scale to the flat, open geography. As a topographic landscape made before his emigration, the print situates Hasegawa within the shin-hanga interest in regional Japanese scenery rendered with atmospheric naturalism.