Girl on the shore - Fukuura

Fukuura sits on the Yokohama coast on Tokyo Bay, a setting that combines fishing-village atmosphere with proximity to the modern city. The composition merges figure study with coastal landscape and draws on both strands of Kasamatsu's training: the bijin-ga drawing skill he absorbed in Kaburagi Kiyokata's atelier, and the landscape interest that became his primary subject. The child would be cut on a key block with the careful contour drawing characteristic of Kiyokata's school, while the surrounding shore, sea, and sky would receive the bokashi treatment that distinguishes Kasamatsu from his teacher. Children appear infrequently in his output, in which adult travelers or empty landscapes are the norm. The print belongs to a quieter register of post-war shin-hanga in which everyday life, rather than grand scenery, supplies the subject, closer in spirit to Shinsui's domestic figures than to Hasui's ambitious landscape series.