Teradomari (寺泊)

Teradomari is a coastal town on the Sea of Japan in Niigata Prefecture in central Honshu, situated approximately fifty kilometers southwest of the city of Niigata on the historic Hokuriku coastal road. The town is now administratively part of the city of Nagaoka after a 2006 municipal merger, but it has retained its identity as a distinct coastal community. Teradomari developed across the medieval and Edo periods as a port on the Sea of Japan, with traffic to the small offshore island of Sado (which lies approximately 33 kilometers offshore) and to other Hokuriku ports across the relatively narrow strait separating the two. Teradomari is associated with the medieval Buddhist priest Nichiren, founder of the Nichiren sect, who departed from Teradomari in October 1271 on his exile to Sado Island following his persecution by the Kamakura shogunate, and several local temples preserve the tradition of his stay at the port before the crossing, with Myoho-ji temple commemorating the event. The town is celebrated for its surviving fishing port, its hot springs (Teradomari Onsen), the seasonal Sea of Japan storms that produce dramatic surf along the rocky northern coast and Sea of Japan winds (uminari), and the seasonal cherry blossom along the surrounding river valleys. The Iwafune Shrine north of the town is associated with maritime safety traditions. For Japanese printmaking Teradomari is most prominently associated with Kawase Hasui, who treated the town in several distinctive shin-hanga compositions including the celebrated Snow at Teradomari (Teradomari yuki), in which the snow-covered coastal road, the wooden houses of the harbor, and the dark Sea of Japan converge in one of his most atmospheric night-and-winter sheets, generally counted among the finest of his Sea of Japan-coast Niigata subjects. Teradomari appears in Hasui's travel-based Hokuriku and Sea of Japan compositions, alongside his other Niigata, Toyama, Ishikawa, and Akita subjects, and the town exemplifies the kind of regional fishing-port subject that Hasui returned to repeatedly across his career. Hasui's visits to the Sea of Japan coast in the 1930s and after the war produced the principal modern shin-hanga record of these small communities. Other shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga artists treated the broader Niigata coast in the same period, with Hashiguchi Goyo, Yoshida Hiroshi, and Tsuchiya Koitsu producing occasional Niigata subjects and the postwar Niigata regional sosaku-hanga circle producing further work. The visual character of Teradomari in Hasui's prints is built on the snow-covered or rain-soaked coastal road running along the shore, the dark wooden facades of the harbor houses with their low eaves and snow-protection boards, the silhouettes of fishing boats and harbor works pulled up on the beach in the winter off-season, the rolling silver-and-gray water of the Sea of Japan at the edge of the composition, and frequently the lantern light spilling from windows into the snow or rain. The diffused gray light and heavy snowfall characteristic of the Sea of Japan winter (yukiguni or snow country) provide the principal atmospheric register. Contemporary visitors reach Teradomari via the JR Echigo Line from Niigata, with the small surviving harbor district, the surrounding coastal road, the Teradomari Aquamarine (Marine Pia Nihonkai) facility, and the daily fishing port (Ame Ichi market) preserving access to the pictorial geography of Hasui's prints.

Hanga catalogues 1 print depicting Teradomari (寺泊), by 1 artist.

Kawase Hasui is among the 1 artist who depicted Teradomari in our collection.