Cloudy Day in Mizuki, Ibaraki Prefecture (Mizuki no komoribi)
by Kawase Hasui
- Date:
- 1946
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Publisher:
by Kawase Hasui
Edition period is the primary value driver for Hasui prints. Pre-war lifetime editions with the Watanabe copyright seal (A through D types) consistently achieve 3–5× the price of posthumous reprints of the same design. Condition is the second key factor — unfaded colors, full margins, and absence of foxing or staining are essential. Subject matter (snow > rain > night > other) provides a further modifier within each edition tier. This postwar design (1946–1957) bears the small 6mm J-seal on lifetime impressions — authentic but from the artist's final decade, when block quality had declined from peak period.
Cloudy Day at Mizuki in Ibaraki Prefecture, published in 1946, depicts a locality in the flat Ibaraki countryside — the agricultural and river landscape between Mito and the Pacific coast — under the soft, diffused light of an overcast day. The komoribi (overcast light or dappled light) treatment gives this composition its distinctive atmospheric quality: neither the drama of rain nor the clarity of sun, but the quiet, meditative light of a gray day that reveals the landscape's forms without harsh shadow or glare. The 1946 postwar date and the quiet agricultural subject represent Hasui's return to modest, familiar domestic subjects after the war years.
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
Woodblock print
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Cloudy Day in Mizuki, Ibaraki Prefecture (Mizuki no komoribi) was created by Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水) in 1946.
Cloudy Day in Mizuki, Ibaraki Prefecture (Mizuki no komoribi) was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1946).
Cloudy Day in Mizuki, Ibaraki Prefecture (Mizuki no komoribi) depicts landscapes and village scenes.
