Waves (Hatō zu), variant II

This second of Uehara Konen's three Hatō zu variants (Library of Congress LC 2008660478) reframes the same compositional problem — a single great wave filling the entire sheet — at a different moment in its breaking arc. Where the first variant arrests the wave at the peak of its curl, this impression captures the moment after, when the crest has begun to disintegrate into discrete columns of spray and the trough below is widening into a dark green hollow. Konen modulates the palette toward a cooler register, with steel grey replacing the warmer ultramarine of the companion print and the foam carried in a slightly more granular distribution across the upper margin. The drawing of the wave's underside, with its thin parallel hatchings suggesting the play of light through transparent water, is one of the most technically refined passages in the entire group and shows Konen working with a Maruyama-Shijō close-observational vocabulary inherited from his teacher Suzuki Kason. The print belongs to the same Library of Congress holding as the other Hatō zu sheets, all preserved from early Meiji-Shōwa print collections, and together the three variants establish Konen's role as a serious early experimenter with the kind of pared-down marine subject that Watanabe Shōzaburō's shin-hanga program would later consolidate.