Nagisa beach

Nagisa simply means shore or strand in Japanese, and a print so titled likely depicts a stretch of coastline rather than a named beach. Tagged as a seascape, the composition probably divides the sheet into bands — wet sand in the foreground, breaking surf, a band of darker offshore water, and a low horizon under sky. This kind of seascape gives the printer room for extensive [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) work: graduated tones in sky and water are achieved by wiping pigment on the block before each impression, and the success of the print depends on the consistency of that hand-wiped gradation across the edition. Maeda's seascapes tend to be relatively spare, with the woodgrain of the cherry block reading through thin printings of blue or grey to suggest the texture of moving water. The subject sits inside the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition only loosely — without a place name it becomes a more universal scene — and reflects the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) willingness to design prints around mood rather than a recognized famous view.