Boathouses in Ine

This print depicts the funaya, or boathouses, that line the protected harbor of Ine, a fishing village on the Tango Peninsula north of Kyoto. The two-story wooden structures, with boat slips at water level and living quarters above, sit flush against the shoreline and are reflected in the calm bay. Tokuriki's treatment of this subject would have employed bokashi gradations across the water and sky to convey the maritime atmosphere, with carefully registered nishiki-e color blocks delineating the dark cedar-shingled roofs against the pale washi ground. The composition typifies his post-war meisho-e production, which extended the Kyoto-centric meisho tradition to encompass coastal and rural Japan. As a sosaku-hanga adherent who self-carved and self-printed many works, Tokuriki applied a softer, more painterly handling than the crisp linework of his shin-hanga contemporaries, favoring atmospheric registration of the place over architectural detail. Ine's distinctive vernacular architecture appealed to Showa-era printmakers documenting regional Japan as modernization advanced.