Georgetown M-street, Washington DC

This print reflects Hiratsuka's later American period — he relocated to Washington DC in 1962 and remained there until 1994, finding new subjects in his adopted city. M Street is the principal commercial corridor through Georgetown, lined with Federal-period brick row houses, gas lamps, and storefronts. Hiratsuka likely treats the streetscape in his characteristic high-contrast black-and-white woodcut idiom, paring architectural detail down to bold geometric blocks of carved relief. The composition probably emphasizes the rhythmic march of facades, doorways, and rooflines against an otherwise flat ground, with large reserves of unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) reading as sky or pavement. Works like this belong to a Washington series in which Hiratsuka applied the disciplined [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) aesthetic he had developed over four decades in Japan to thoroughly American subjects, demonstrating that the tradition he helped found could absorb foreign vocabulary without abandoning its formal foundations. The print extends his lifelong interest in built environments — previously focused on Japanese temples and shrines — into the American urban vernacular.