Coin

A close-focus study of a single coin, the print likely renders the face of a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean cast-bronze cash coin — the square-holed pieces (kan'ei tsuho or older sen) that circulated across East Asia for centuries. Hiratsuka frequently took small object subjects as opportunities to test the expressive range of carved line and raw [washi](/glossary/washi): the worn relief of cast script, the irregular outer rim, and the central square aperture translate naturally into mokuhanga's flat black-and-white vocabulary. Cut and pulled by the artist alone, the work follows the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) discipline he spent his career advocating. Such isolated-object compositions sit alongside his architectural studies and figure work as evidence of his interest in finding monumental presence in modest subjects, an approach he passed on to students including Munakata Shiko.