Naruto Whirlpools

Naruto Whirlpools depicts the tidal maelstroms that form in the Naruto Strait between Awaji Island and Shikoku, where the Seto Inland Sea meets the Kii Channel. The subject is a touchstone of Japanese landscape printmaking, treated by Hiroshige in the 1850s and revisited by sosaku-hanga artists seeking to render moving water through the wood medium. Asano's handling would typically rely on bokashi gradation to model the concentric rings of the whirlpool against deeper indigo passages of open sea, with carved keylines suggesting the curl and break of foam. As a self-carved, self-printed work in the sosaku-hanga tradition, the print departs from the division of labor of commercial ukiyo-e: the artist controlled every pass of the baren on washi, allowing register marks and ink saturation to register his own touch. Within Asano's wider output, which centers on Kyoto temples and gardens, this meisho-e of a coastal phenomenon represents his occasional excursions beyond the capital to canonical Japanese landscape sites.