Poem of the Katsura river V

The Katsura River flows along the western edge of Kyoto past Arashiyama and the seventeenth-century Katsura Imperial Villa, and has been a literary subject since the Heian period. The 'Poem of' title and the roman numeral V place this sheet within a sustained series in which Hashimoto returned to the river under varying seasons or vantage points. Series of this kind connect his [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) practice to the older [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of sequential named-place views, while the literary framing aligns with the postwar interest in pairing prints with classical poetic associations. Compositionally, Katsura subjects in his hand typically use the river as a horizontal organizing band with bamboo, wooded banks, or distant hills layered above. He cut and printed every block himself, and the series format gave him room to vary palette and weather without departing from a single architectural-landscape vocabulary.