Spring at the foot of Mt. Asana

A [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e)-style landscape locating the viewer at the base of Mt. Asana (likely Mt. Asama, the active volcano on the border between Nagano and Gunma prefectures). Spring subjects in Shinsui's landscapes combine the pale pinks of cherry or plum blossom with the cool greens and grays of a still-cold mountain ground, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation used heavily for atmospheric perspective on the mountain's flanks. Within his oeuvre, landscape work appeared in defined series, including the Eight Views of Omi, alongside individual sheets that took specific named sites as their subject. This print belongs to that less prominent but technically demanding stream of his practice, in which the printer's calibration of overprinting and ink density does much of the descriptive work that line accomplishes in his [bijin-ga](/glossary/bijin-ga), a division of labor characteristic of Watanabe-published [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscapes.