Bandai Asahi — 磐梯朝日

Mount Bandai (1,816 meters) is a composite volcano in Fukushima Prefecture that collapsed catastrophically in 1888, creating a landscape of marshes and lakes now protected within Bandai-Asahi National Park. Hasui's treatment of Bandai Asahi captures the mountain at dawn (asahi translates as morning sun), a subject that requires the printer to produce the warm gradation of early light against the cool blue-gray of the volcanic summit still in pre-dawn shadow. The compositional challenge lies in rendering the mountain's asymmetrical silhouette—shaped by its partial collapse—against a sky that brightens from the horizon upward. Bokashi gradation on the sky block moves from deep blue at the top through violet and orange to the pale gold of the horizon, a technical procedure requiring multiple burnishing passes with the baren across dampened washi paper.