Biwa-ko (Lake Biwa) / Shin Nihon hyakkei 新日本百景 (One Hundred New Views of Japan, No. 12)

This landscape print depicts Lake Biwa, Japan's largest freshwater lake, situated in Shiga Prefecture east of Kyoto. As the twelfth entry in Asada Benji's Shin Nihon hyakkei series, it participates in the long [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of celebrated-place imagery while reframing that tradition through a twentieth-century lens. Asada's Kyoto training and proximity to the lake would have given him direct familiarity with the site's characteristic moods — early morning mist settling over the broad expanse of water, the Hira mountain range visible along the western shore, or the pine-lined promontory of Karasaki. The series format implies compositional variety across its one hundred sheets, and this [oban](/glossary/oban)-format print likely employs graduated [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading in the sky or water to evoke atmosphere. Asada's movement between [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) and [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) conventions suggests a design that balances observational specificity with considered decorative structure, characteristic of Kyoto-area printmakers of his generation.