View of Hakodate

A second Hakodate view from Maeda, likely taken from one of the elevated vantage points on Mount Hakodate or the Motomachi hillside that look down across the narrow isthmus to the harbor and the Tsugaru Strait beyond. Hakodate's topography — a hammerhead peninsula joined to Hokkaido by a low neck of land — produces a townscape that compresses sea, port, rooflines, and mountains into a single frame, a composition well suited to the high-horizon, planar treatment of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) landscape. The numeral in the slug suggests this is part of a small series or revisit of the same subject, a working method common among sosaku-hanga printmakers, who often pulled successive states of the same view as their carving and color decisions evolved. Expect blocks cut for clean color separation: massed roof tiles, the curve of the bay, and a sky printed with restrained [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) rather than the saturated gradients of [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga). The print connects to Maeda's lifelong preoccupation with Hokkaido's particular northern light.