Daybreak over Lake Yamanaka (Yamanakako no akatsuki)

Date:: 1931
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Publisher:

Edition:

Published by Watanabe Shozaburo

Source:

Typical Price

A nocturnal water scene — one of Hasui's most technically sophisticated subjects, requiring the master printing of both moonlight effects and water reflections simultaneously. Gallery retail for Moon at Magome (a comparable night-water scene) is listed at $15,000 by Egenolf Gallery. Moonlight over Kanazawa Canal (postwar, 1950) sold for $2,300 at Bonhams London (2022) even in a later edition — earlier impressions command substantially more. Pre-war lifetime editions bearing the Watanabe copyright seal (A through G types, 1926–1944) are the most desirable.

Pre-war lifetime edition (Watanabe seal): $2,000–$7,000
Postwar lifetime edition (J-seal): $800–$2,500
Posthumous/Heisei edition: $300–$800

Description

Daybreak over Lake Yamanaka (Yamanakako no akatsuki), published in 1931, depicts the largest of the Fuji Five Lakes in the first light of dawn — the akatsuki (deep pre-dawn dark) when the sky begins its barely-perceptible transition from black to indigo, with Fuji's silhouette barely distinguishable from the surrounding darkness but becoming incrementally clearer as the dawn advances. Lake Yamanaka is the highest and easternmost of the five lakes, situated so that Fuji's eastern face (the face that catches the first morning light) dominates the view from its northern shore. The 1931 composition captures the most extreme of dawn's transitional moments.