Large catch while dragnet fishing at Kujukuri Beach

Large catch while dragnet fishing at Kujukuri Beach is a horizontally extended fishing scene by Takahashi Shotei, signing as Hiroaki, with the impression in question listed by the dealer Art of Japan and aggregated through the Japanese Art Open Database. The subject revisits the iwashi sardine fishery at Kujukuri on the long Pacific coast of Kazusa province, now Chiba Prefecture, which had been celebrated since the Edo period for its great seine-net operations. Shotei stretches the design across a wide pictorial field, multiplying small figures along the shore and out in the surf to dramatize the cooperative work of hauling in the net, echoing earlier ukiyo-e drag-net compositions while filtering them through the calmer atmospheric mode of shin-hanga. The print is closely related to other Kujukuri designs in the Takahashi Shotei catalogue, including the inscribed 'actual sketch' version recorded elsewhere, and together they show how the artist returned more than once to a single subject for the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo's program. Although his most commercially successful format with Watanabe was the chuban landscape, Shotei was capable of constructing extended panoramic compositions that suited the dramatic scope of large net catches. The shin-hanga revival's interest in regional industry rather than only courtly or scenic subjects is visible in this kind of design, and impressions recorded by dealers like Art of Japan have become important secondary evidence for impressions whose museum trail is otherwise thin. The work belongs to a broader effort to fill out the geography and economy of Japan within the publisher's catalogue.