Miyajima

Miyajima — properly Itsukushima — was a frequently reproduced [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) subject, and Koitsu treated the island's famed floating torii on several occasions during the 1930s. This print likely depicts the great vermillion torii of Itsukushima Shrine standing in the tidal waters of the Inland Sea, with the wooded slopes of Mount Misen rising behind. The compositional convention for the subject placed the torii at middle distance, isolated against [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi)-graduated water and sky, with the stilted corridors of the shrine visible along the shoreline. The vermillion of the gate set against the cool blues and greens of water and forest gave printers the chance to demonstrate the saturated pigments and clean registration that distinguished shin-hanga from earlier [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e). Koitsu's Miyajima prints, published through Doi Hangaten, belonged to a body of designs aimed at the international market that grew rapidly after the Great Kanto Earthquake, when publishers sought subjects with established cachet among Western collectors of Japanese landscape prints.