Kawase Hasui

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) was one of the most important Japanese woodblock print artists of the twentieth century and a central figure in the shin-hanga ("new prints") movement that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e printmaking in modern Japan. Over a career spanning nearly four decades, he created more than six hundred woodblock print designs, celebrated for their masterful depictions of Japanese landscapes in rain, snow, moonlight, and mist — atmospheric scenes that have led him to be likened to the great Edo-period landscape master Hiroshige.

Born Kawase Bunjiro on May 18, 1883, in the Shiba district of Tokyo, Hasui grew up in a family that ran a rope and thread wholesaling business. His uncle was the noted Meiji-era author and journalist Kanagaki Robun. He showed an early passion for art but was expected to take over the family business. When the business went bankrupt around 1909, Hasui was finally free to pursue his artistic ambitions at the age of twenty-six.

Hasui's artistic training followed an indirect path. He initially studied painting under Aoyagi Bokusen as a young man, and later studied brush painting with Araki Kan'yu. Around 1908, he approached the renowned nihonga master Kaburagi Kiyokata for instruction, but Kiyokata initially declined, advising him to study Western-style painting first. Hasui accordingly spent two years studying oil painting and watercolor under Okada Saburosuke before Kiyokata accepted him as a pupil around 1910. It was Kiyokata who bestowed upon him the art name "Hasui," which can be translated as "water from a spring." Under Kiyokata's tutelage, Hasui studied ukiyo-e and nihonga painting and worked as an illustrator for magazines and books.

Hasui's career as a woodblock print designer began in August 1918, when he was inspired by an exhibition of Ito Shinsui's Eight Views of Lake Biwa. He approached Shinsui's publisher, Watanabe Shozaburo, who commissioned three experimental prints based on sketches Hasui had made at Shiobara. The success of these first designs launched a prolific partnership that would last for the rest of Hasui's life. In 1919, he produced the Twelve Scenes of Tokyo, Eight Views of the Southeast, and began the sixteen-print Souvenirs of Travel, First Series. By 1923, he had already created over one hundred landscape designs.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923, proved catastrophic for Hasui. He lost his home and one hundred eighty-eight accumulated sketchbooks. Watanabe's workshop was also destroyed, including its woodblocks and print stock, among them the unfinished Collection of Scenes of Japan series. Pre-earthquake prints by Hasui are consequently rare. Despite this devastating loss, later that year Watanabe financed a one-hundred-and-two-day sketching trip for Hasui through western Japan, the longest journey of his career. The sketches from this trip formed the basis for the Souvenirs of Travel, Third Series, published between 1924 and 1929.

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Hasui entered his most productive period. He created the Twenty Views of Tokyo between 1925 and 1930, which includes such celebrated images as Zojoji Temple in Shiba, along with further series of scenic views of Japan. Watanabe remained his principal publisher throughout his career. In 1939 he produced the Eight Views of Korea series, published by Watanabe.

The Second World War severely disrupted Hasui's career, and his home was damaged by Allied air raids. Despite the hardships of the war years, the prints he produced during this era continued to depict peaceful scenes of traditional Japan.

Hasui's style is defined by his extraordinary ability to capture atmosphere and mood in landscape scenes. Working within the shin-hanga collaborative system, he designed the prints while professional carvers and printers at the Watanabe workshop executed the woodblocks and printing under his supervision. His subjects were almost exclusively landscapes — temples, shrines, coastlines, village streets, and famous scenic views throughout Japan; the great majority of his more than six hundred designs were landscapes. Hasui traveled extensively throughout Japan, sketching on location with detailed color notations that he later refined into finished designs at his studio. Human figures in his compositions are typically absent or minimal, allowing the natural environment to dominate. His palette featured rich, dense colors and solid forms, blending the traditional Japanese aesthetic of the ukiyo-e landscape tradition with the Western realism he had learned from Okada Saburosuke.

In 1953 he created Snow at Zojoji Temple, whose printing process was documented for posterity by the woodblock historian Narazaki Muneshige as a record of traditional printmaking technique. In 1956, Hasui was designated a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government, becoming the first woodblock print artist to receive this distinction.

Hasui completed his final design, Hall of the Golden Hue at Hiraizumi, in 1957, the year of his death. He died on November 7, 1957, at the age of seventy-four. Today, his works are held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His prints continue to be among the most recognized and collected examples of Japanese woodblock printmaking.