Landscape

"Landscape" stands as a representative example of Hiratsuka Un'ichi's monochrome approach to topographical subjects. Without a specified place name, the print concentrates on the structural elements that recur throughout his landscape oeuvre: a foreground stand of trees or rocks rendered in dense black, a middle ground of fields or water carved as broken line, and a distant ridge reduced to a single horizontal cut. Hiratsuka built his landscape vocabulary by working directly on the block—often carving without a fully resolved preparatory drawing—so that the knife determined the final image rather than reproducing a brushed sketch. This method, central to the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) doctrine he helped formulate, distinguishes his work from the color landscapes of contemporaries Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida. The print's reliance on the contrast between inked and unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) continues a graphic tradition Hiratsuka traced back to early Buddhist printed images and Edo-period sumizuri-e.