Onsen

The slug "saru-onsen" (monkey hot spring) suggests this print depicts the snow macaques that bathe in the volcanic pools of mountainous regions such as Jigokudani in Nagano, a subject that drew Hiratsuka's attention as he traveled documenting Japanese landscape and folk life. As a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) work, the print would have been designed, carved, and printed by Hiratsuka himself, in keeping with the movement's insistence on the artist's hand at every stage. His mature style favored stark black-and-white mokuhanga in which the carved gouges of the chisel remain visible as expressive marks, with white passages reading as snow, steam, or rock and dense black areas defining the bathing animals and surrounding cedars. The technique avoids the layered color registration of [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) in favor of a single key block printed on [washi](/glossary/washi), a format Hiratsuka championed throughout his career. The subject extends his interest beyond the temples and shrines for which he is best known, situating an everyday natural-world scene within the same graphic vocabulary he applied to architectural and Buddhist themes across his eight-decade output.