Matsue

Matsue, the castle town on Lake Shinji in Shimane Prefecture, was Hiratsuka's birthplace, and he returned to its motifs across his career. The print likely depicts a view of the city—its waterways, traditional houses, or the silhouette of Matsue Castle—rendered in the monochrome woodcut idiom that defined his mature work. Reduced to interlocking planes of dense black and reserved washi, the scene foregrounds architectural geometry over atmospheric description. Hiratsuka's hometown subjects sit within the meisho-e tradition of place-based image-making, but his treatment departs from polychrome ukiyo-e precedent by relying on carved contour for expressive weight. As a founding sosaku-hanga artist, he cut and printed each block himself, leaving visible knife marks as part of the image. Matsue prints form a recurring strand in his output of more than 3,000 works, alongside the temple, shrine, and landscape series for which he is widely recognized. The work reads as both topographical record and personal homage to the town that shaped him.