Crossing the Frozen Suwa Lake in Shinano Province (Shinshu Suwa kosui kori watari)

Crossing the Frozen Suwa Lake in Shinano Province, dated 1828 and held by the Art Institute of Chicago, is a Katsushika Hokusai print depicting travelers making their way across the ice of Lake Suwa in winter. In Shinano, modern Nagano, the lake famously freezes solid enough each year that pressure ridges form across its surface, a phenomenon known as omiwatari that is associated with the local Suwa shrine. Hokusai treats the scene with characteristic restraint, deploying Prussian blue and pale tones to render the cold air and luminous ice while small figures and pack animals trace a thin diagonal across the white plane. The composition exemplifies the inventive geography of late Edo ukiyo-e, in which a ukiyo-e print designer working from sketches and reports could turn a regional curiosity into a striking image for a national audience. The print also demonstrates Hokusai's interest in extreme weather and elemental forces, themes that run through his Fuji series and his Tour of Waterfalls. The Art Institute of Chicago preserves the design within its Japanese print collection alongside other Hokusai landscapes, where it documents both a specific local custom and the artist's distinctive method of rendering snow and ice in the woodblock medium. For modern viewers the image offers a vivid record of premodern Japanese winter travel and of the cultural significance attached to Lake Suwa's annual freeze.