Lake Kawaguchi

Lake Kawaguchi, one of the Fuji Five Lakes, lies in Yamanashi Prefecture near Hagiwara's birthplace of Kofu, making this print a return to autobiographical landscape. The composition likely arranges the lake's still water against the mountain or the surrounding hills, exploiting mokuhanga's affinity for flat tonal fields and bokashi gradients to render reflective surfaces. Hagiwara's mature technique of layering many separately carved blocks suits the depiction of water, allowing translucent overlays of cool pigment to suggest both depth and atmospheric haze. The subject connects the print to the meisho-e tradition of celebrated landscape views, but Hagiwara's reductive approach pushes the genre toward abstraction — the lake becomes a tonal field as much as a topographical record. As with his Mount Fuji prints, the work belongs to the artist's lifelong dialogue with the geological landscape of his youth, filtered through the sosaku-hanga commitment to personal interpretation over inherited convention.