Kangetsu

Kangetsu (寒月) means 'cold moon,' the winter moon of late December and January in the traditional Japanese calendar, and the title places this print squarely within the long lineage of tsukimi imagery that runs from Hiroshige through Hasui and Yoshida. Williams's treatment would depart from the [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) convention of figures viewing the moon and instead present the winter moon over an unpeopled rural landscape—rice fields, a treeline, a thatched roof—rendered with the same near-photographic specificity as his oil paintings. A circular pale disc set against deeply printed indigo and black sky, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients carrying the transition from horizon to zenith, is the typical structure for such a composition. Within his output, the moon prints belong to a quieter, more emblematic register than the Hanase village scenes, reaching toward classical Japanese aesthetic categories—mono no aware, sabi—without illustration or caption, just the carved blocks and the unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) doing the work.