Autumn Rainbow at Hatta, Kaga

Hatta is a village in the former Kaga domain of Ishikawa Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast, a region Hasui visited during his provincial sketching journeys. Rainbows appear rarely in the shin-hanga canon, making this composition unusual: the meteorological phenomenon required the printer to blend a delicate arc of graduated color—likely spanning from violet through yellow—across an otherwise atmospheric sky still heavy with departing rain clouds. The autumnal landscape of Kaga, with its pine groves, coastal inlets, and scattered settlements, would provide the terrestrial anchor beneath this arc. Technically, producing a convincing rainbow demanded precise registration across multiple impressions and careful bokashi gradation from the key-block printer, making it one of the more exacting subjects in Hasui's published output.