Tide

Tide depicts a coastal scene with the rhythmic pull of seawater against a Japanese shoreline, a subject Kasamatsu returned to throughout his career. The composition likely emphasizes horizontal banding — sky, water, and shore — with bokashi gradations carrying the eye through atmospheric transitions of color. Kasamatsu's seascapes typically employ restrained palettes of indigo, gray, and umber, with the printer pulling the baren across multiple impressions of blue to suggest the layered movement of waves. The print belongs to his post-war output, when he worked under the publisher Unsodo as part of the late shin-hanga revival before turning toward sosaku-hanga and self-printing in the 1950s. Like Kawase Hasui, his fellow student under Kaburagi Kiyokata, Kasamatsu was drawn to meisho-e — places imbued with a particular meteorological mood — but his coastal subjects tend to be quieter, less narrative, and more focused on the relationship between water, sky, and the threshold between them.