Moon over Chidori castle

Chidori-jō, the "plover castle," is the affectionate name for Matsue Castle, so called for the way its tiered rooflines suggest the silhouette of a plover in flight. As Hiratsuka's hometown landmark, the building recurs in his work, and a moonlit treatment fits within the long Japanese tradition of pairing castles with celestial imagery. The print likely sets the dark, geometrically stacked roofs of the castle against a reserved disc of moon, with the surrounding sky and moat rendered as flat passages of inked black and unprinted washi. Hiratsuka's approach abandons the bokashi gradations that traditional ukiyo-e printers used for night skies, instead achieving nocturnal weight through the density of cut blacks. The composition relies on the contrast of solid mass and reserved white circle—a graphic vocabulary closer to modern relief print than to shin-hanga atmospherics. As a sosaku-hanga work, the design, carving, and printing are all the artist's own, expressing his lifelong commitment to integrated authorship of the print.