In Broad Daylight (A Summer Midday)

The child prodigy Itō Shinsui was discovered at a young age by Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962), founder of the shin-hanga movement and publisher of this print. Shinsui was a pioneer of shin-hanga, producing full-scale paintings which were then translated into woodprints by dedicated craftsmen. While beautiful young women (bijin-ga) dominate Shinsui’s more commercially successful prints from 1922 onward, scholars have pointed out that his earlier, unconventional landscape prints share the experimental qualities of sosaku hanga. The meditative In Broad Daylight (Mahiru, October 1917) was inspired by the following haiku-like record of a personal, momentary impression of an ordinary landscape:
The column of white cloud rising into the blue sky of early summer was impossible as it shone in the full sunlight. There was a farmer completely focused on this work in the raised wheat field. It was just after noon.