Full Moon on the fifteenth Night

The "fifteenth night" (jūgoya) refers to the harvest moon of the eighth lunar month, the central night of tsukimi (moon-viewing) in the Japanese calendar. Hiratsuka's treatment likely depicts the full moon held within or above a foreground motif—pampas grass, pine, or a glimpse of architecture—rendered in the densely cut blacks and reserved washi disc characteristic of his mature work. Rather than building atmospheric depth through bokashi gradation, the artist opposes the unprinted circle of the moon against a flat, inked sky, achieving the weight of night through the carved block alone. This stripped-down graphic approach distinguishes his nocturnes from those of contemporaneous shin-hanga artists such as Kawase Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi, who relied on layered color printing for atmospheric effect. The subject sits within the long tradition of moonlit imagery in Japanese print, but Hiratsuka, as a founding sosaku-hanga figure, recasts it as a study in pure relief contrast—the artist's own design, carved and printed by his own hand.