Misasa

Misasa depicts the hot spring town of Misasa Onsen in Tottori Prefecture, almost certainly drawn from Maekawa Senpan's long-running series of Japanese hot spring landscapes (Nihon onsen fukei), which he developed from the early 1930s onward. The composition likely centers on the wooden inns and bridges that line the Mitoku River, rendered with the flattened planes and soft contours that define his sosaku-hanga work. Senpan typically reduced architecture to broad blocks of muted color — slate roofs, ochre walls, indigo curtains — printed without the heavy keyblock outline of traditional ukiyo-e. Subtle bokashi gradations would suggest mist rising from the baths or evening light over the river. Unlike Kawase Hasui's polished shin-hanga onsen views, Senpan's onsen prints carry the texture of the baren and the irregularity of self-carved blocks, in keeping with the creative-print principle of jiga, jikoku, jizuri (self-drawn, self-carved, self-printed). This series remains the body of work for which he is most widely collected.