Coastal Road

The title points to a landscape view of a road following a stretch of coastline, a subject within the meisho-e tradition that Maekawa frequently revisited in a personal, unidealized register. The composition likely uses the road as a diagonal that organizes the image, drawing the eye between the bordering land and water. Maekawa's landscapes tend toward simplified massing — a few large planes of color for sea, sky, and land, separated by economical outline rather than finely worked detail. As a sosaku-hanga artist he carved and printed his own blocks, and the visible knife marks, slightly irregular registration, and absorbent quality of washi paper give the surface a hand-made character that differs from the polished travel prints of the contemporary shin-hanga movement. Bokashi (gradient inking) may appear in the sea or sky, but in restrained passages rather than the elaborate atmospheric effects favored by Kawase Hasui or Yoshida Hiroshi. The print fits within his body of quiet rural and coastal scenes that record ordinary Japanese geography.