Dawn of Naruto

The Naruto Strait, located between Awaji Island and Shikoku, is famous for its powerful tidal whirlpools that form as currents funnel through the narrow channel. This woodblock print depicts the strait at dawn, when the first light illuminates the water and the distant shoreline emerges from darkness. Koichi renders the transitional moment between night and day, a subject that demands careful manipulation of color gradients across the printing blocks. The Naruto whirlpools have been a subject for Japanese artists since the Edo period, but Koichi approaches the scene with the quiet restraint of postwar shin-hanga rather than the dramatic energy found in earlier depictions. The emphasis falls on the sky's slow brightening and the vast horizontal expanse of the strait rather than on the turbulence below.