Spring Water

Created in 1909 and held by the Honolulu Museum of Art (accession 27534), this color woodblock print by Tsutsui Toshimine depicts a spring-water scene in the small-format [kuchi-e](/glossary/kuchi-e) style that he had refined over more than a decade of production for Bungei Kurabu and related literary magazines. The print dates from late in the kuchi-e era, when photo-mechanical reproduction was beginning to displace woodblock-printed frontispieces from popular fiction; Toshimine's continued production at this date reflects the persistent prestige of the medium among educated readers and the availability of skilled block-cutters and printers in Tokyo's Shitaya district. The composition treats the spring-water subject with the contemplative, slightly melancholic register that characterized late-Meiji [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga) and genre prints — the human figure, where present, is small relative to the natural setting, and the palette of greens and blues evokes the cool quietude of mountain water rather than the bright drama of waterfall prints in the same genre. The print survives in the James Michener collection at Honolulu and is among the better-preserved examples of Toshimine's late kuchi-e production.