Signpost

A signpost—likely a wooden roadside marker carved with directional kanji or place names—would attract Hiratsuka as a subject for the same reasons as his frequent depictions of stone lanterns, gravestones, and inscribed steles: the form combines geometric simplicity with carved texture. The print likely isolates the marker against a minimal landscape or unmodulated ground, exploiting the contrast between the post's silhouette and the surrounding space. Hiratsuka was attentive to inscribed surfaces throughout his career; his interest in stone rubbings and Buddhist epigraphy shaped his approach to such humble subjects. The sosaku-hanga emphasis on the artist's own hand finds particular resonance in a depiction of one carved object made through another act of carving—the woodblock and the signpost sharing a kinship of process between cutter and cut, with the chisel marks of the printmaking visible across the rendered surface of the marker itself.