Full moon

A second moon study within Hiratsuka's recurring engagement with celestial subjects. The composition treats the moon disc as either reserved white paper or as a positive ink form, depending on whether the surrounding sky carries ink or remains uncut from the block. Such reductive compositions test the printmaker's control of the baren, since uneven pressure produces gradients that compromise the pure circle. Moon subjects were a touchstone Hiratsuka returned to across an eight-decade career, allowing him to revisit one motif under varying compositional emphases. The willingness to issue prints under the same or near-identical title reflects sosaku-hanga's self-publishing economy: artists released variations to a small collector base in limited numbered editions, rather than producing single catalog editions through a commercial publisher in the manner of contemporaneous shin-hanga production.