Sekishu Sagawa

A landscape print referencing Sekishu, the historical name for the western portion of Iwami Province in present-day Shimane Prefecture, near Hiratsuka's native Matsue region. Sagawa identifies a specific river or village within that area, placing the work within the artist's recurring engagement with the geography of the San'in coast. Hiratsuka's regional landscapes typically organize hills, water, and built structures into stratified bands of carved black, with the white of unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) reserved for sky, water surface, or roof tiles. The cutting often preserves visible wood-grain texture in foreground passages, a deliberate [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) affirmation of the block as a participant in the image rather than a neutral matrix. Where [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) publishers of the same era favored gradated color [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) for atmosphere, Hiratsuka achieved spatial recession through the calibrated thickness and density of black line alone. The print sits within his broader project of documenting the rural and small-town Japan of his youth, made through the late 1930s and 1940s before his American move.