One year of Izu in pictures and poetry

This print belongs to a literary-visual project pairing scenes from the Izu Peninsula across the seasons with accompanying poetry, a format that descends from a long Japanese tradition of illustrated poetry collections and ehon. Izu, jutting south of the Kanto plain into Sagami Bay, had long been associated with hot springs, coastal scenery, and literary subjects, including Kawabata Yasunari's 'The Izu Dancer.' Hiratsuka's contribution would have been a self-carved, self-printed mokuhanga executed in his characteristic black-and-white idiom, in which the carved line itself carries the descriptive weight rather than color. Such collaborations between [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) printmakers and poets were common in mid-twentieth-century Japan and helped extend the movement's reach beyond the gallery wall into the book and portfolio. The project reflects Hiratsuka's broader engagement with regional Japanese landscape as a recurring subject across his eight-decade career.