Lake Mojiri

A landscape treating a named lake and its surroundings rather than a human subject. Lake views formed a recurring element of Shinsui's landscape practice, with the Eight Views of Omi (Lake Biwa) series providing the principal frame of reference; this print belongs either to a comparable series or to a single-sheet observation in the same idiom. The genre invites particular use of [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi)—horizontal bands of graduated color across the water plane and at the horizon—and reduced linework, allowing tonal printing rather than outline to carry the image. As with other Watanabe-published [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscapes, the design would have been realized through close collaboration between Shinsui as designer, the carver of keyblock and color blocks, and the printer, with the latter responsible for the wet-on-wet effects and graded passages that distinguish shin-hanga water and sky from their Edo-period predecessors.