Shirahama 'Engetsuto' ('Round Moon Island' at Shirahama) / Shin Nihon hyakkei 新日本百景 (One Hundred New Views of Japan, No. 35)

Shirahama 'Engetsuto' ('Round Moon Island' at Shirahama) is a Japanese woodblock print by Maeda Toshiro, designed as part of the Shin Nihon hyakkei (New One Hundred Views of Japan) series, where it appears as No. 35. The image depicts Engetsuto, the celebrated 'Round Moon Island' off the coast of Shirahama on the Kii Peninsula in present-day Wakayama Prefecture. The small offshore islet is famous for the natural arched opening eroded through its center by the sea, a window of stone that frames sky and water and gives the rock its lunar name. Maeda Toshiro composes the view to foreground that arch, setting the island against the surrounding coastal landscape so that the play of solid mass and open aperture becomes the structural anchor of the print.

The Shin Nihon hyakkei series, in which this design belongs, was conceived in the spirit of the great topographical print sets of earlier Japanese woodblock tradition, updating the format for the twentieth century by surveying modern scenic spots and meisho across the country. Within that program, Engetsuto stands in as the representative landmark of the Shirahama region, and Maeda Toshiro treats it with the careful observation that the series demanded of its contributing artists.

The print belongs squarely to the sosaku-hanga (creative print) lineage of Japanese woodblock practice, in which the artist is responsible for the conception, drawing, carving, and printing of the work rather than handing the design off to specialist craftsmen as in the older ukiyo-e workshop system. That sosaku-hanga ethos is consistent with the broader twentieth-century revival of artist-driven Japanese woodblock printmaking, and it shapes the directness of touch visible in Maeda Toshiro's handling of rock, water, and sky.

A shōwa-period impression of the design is preserved in the collection of the British Museum and is published online via ukiyo-e.org from museum-supplied imagery (source: ukiyo-e.org, https://ukiyo-e.org/image/bm/AN00226194_001_l).