Wachi No1

Wachi No1 is the first in a sequence of prints Tanaka Ryohei made of Wachi, a rural district in what is now Kyotamba in northern Kyoto Prefecture. The numbering indicates that Tanaka considered the locale worth returning to — a habit he developed with several villages whose thatched-roof minka and quiet lanes suited his patient, documentary approach. The composition almost certainly centers on a farmhouse or row of farmhouses set within their characteristic landscape of fields, stone walls, and surrounding hills. As an etching, the image would have been carried by line: hard-ground hatching for the roof bundles and timber posts, aquatint for the tonal weight of shadowed eaves and walls. Tanaka's Wachi series is representative of his broader practice of mapping a single rural place over years, building up a record of its houses and seasons rather than searching for variety of subject.