Description
Beautiful shin-hanga (新版画) woodblock print of large horizontal format made, as we read on the right margin, on the occasion of the 2600th anniversary of the founding of Japan (紀元二千六百年), that is in 1940, by the artist Tsuchiya Koitsu (土屋光逸) and depicting the Kashihara Jingu (橿原神宮), the famous Shinto shrine located in the Nara Prefecture (奈良県) built at the site where Japan’s first emperor, Jinmu (神武天皇), is said to have acceded to the throne.
Tsuchiya Koitsu (1870-1949) began his career with genre scenes and prints relating to the Sino-Japanese War (日清戦争). The turning point in his artistic production occurred in 1931 when, on the occasion of an exhibition dedicated to his master Kobayashi Kiyochika (小林清親), he met the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo (渡辺庄三郎) and ended up devoting himself mainly to landscape prints in the shin-hanga (新版画) style, characterizing them with a superb interpretation of light that recalls the works of Kiyochika himself but also of Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水).
The fine print on Japanese washi paper (和紙), despite the right signs of aging and in particular slight spots on the margins, is in overall very good condition.
