Okuno-hosomichi Matsushima

Drawn from Saito's series inspired by Matsuo Basho's seventeenth-century travel account Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North), this print depicts Matsushima Bay, the pine-covered archipelago in Miyagi Prefecture that Basho famously found beyond words. Saito's treatment typically silhouettes the bay's small rocky islets and their twisted pines as flat dark shapes against bands of water and sky, often using bokashi gradients to suggest mist or the line where sea meets distant shore. The composition compresses the famous view into a few essential masses, exchanging the busy detail of an ukiyo-e Tokaido print for a near-abstract rhythm of black and grey. Saito's Oku no Hosomichi works connect his modernist sosaku-hanga practice to a deeply embedded literary tradition, retracing Basho's route through northeastern Japan — a region Saito knew intimately from his own Aizu upbringing.