Matsushima—the pine-covered islands of Miyagi Bay, counted among Japan's three most celebrated scenic landscapes—presented Saito with a subject already loaded with centuries of artistic precedent. Basho famously wrote of Matsushima that its beauty left him speechless; Saito's response was characteristically visual, reducing the famous pine-crowned islands to geometric masses, the water a flat ground, the composition achieving a simplified clarity that the exhausted subject rarely received.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Okuno Hosomichi Matsushima Sendai was created by Saito Kiyoshi (斎藤清).
Okuno Hosomichi Matsushima Sendai depicts landscapes, seascapes, and trees, set at Matsushima.
