South Wind

Four men are aboard a wooden boat moving over a blue sea. At the center stands a shirtless man with a red cloth wound around his waist, another cloth over his head, looking into the distance. At the back left a boatman in white puts a hand to his mouth, and at the front right a young man in a straw hat sits hugging his knees. Beyond the horizon, the shape of an island can be seen.

The strong sunlight is expressed through contrasts of color and light and dark: the shading of sunburned muscles, the whitely gleaming crests of waves, the shadows on the deck. The meticulous planning, solid composition and energetic brushwork were also highly praised. The subject draws on Wada's own experience in his youth, when he was caught in a shipwreck off Izu and, after drifting, reached Izu Oshima.

In 1907, at the first Bunten, the first art exhibition held by the state, it received the highest award, the second-class prize. The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, regards the first Bunten as the starting point for collecting modern works, and this work stands at the origin of its collection. It was transferred from the Ministry of Education in fiscal 1953 and designated an Important Cultural Property in 2018.