Dusk at Aso (Outer Crater) (Aso no yu (gairin))
by Kawase Hasui
- Date:
- 1948
- Medium:
- Color woodblock print
- Format:
- Oban
- Publisher:
- Watanabe Shozaburo
- Edition:
- Published by Watanabe Shozaburo
- Source:
- Art Institute of Chicago
by Kawase Hasui
Night views with moonlight and lantern effects carry a 20–30% premium over comparable daytime scenes. The dramatic tonal contrasts required for nocturnal subjects make impression quality especially important — fine examples from pre-war printings show a depth of color that later editions rarely match. Prints with well-preserved black areas and accurate moonlight bokashi command the highest prices. Postwar lifetime editions (1946–1957) bearing the small 6mm J-seal represent authentic lifetime impressions but from the artist's final decade.
Dusk at Mount Aso's outer crater — the vast caldera that contains the world's largest active volcanic complex — offers a landscape of unearthly scale. This 1948 print shows the outer crater rim at dusk, the caldera floor with its active inner cones visible below, the volcanic smoke still rising as the sky darkens. Aso's scale is beyond most of Hasui's subjects — the caldera 25 kilometers across — and the dusk condition adds a sulfurous, ominous quality to the volcanic panorama.
Woodblock print
Teradomari no yau
1921
Color woodblock print; oban
![Mount Fuji on a Moonlit Night, Kawai Bridge (Tsukiyo no Fuji [Kawaibashi]), from the series "Selection of Views of the Tokaido (Tokaido fukei senshu)" by Kawase Hasui](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/d0960668-1e73-339a-b182-fb995a54bff0/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
1947
Color woodblock print; oban
March 1933
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Dusk at Aso (Outer Crater) (Aso no yu (gairin)) was created by Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水) in 1948.
Dusk at Aso (Outer Crater) (Aso no yu (gairin)) was published by Watanabe Shozaburo (1948).
Dusk at Aso (Outer Crater) (Aso no yu (gairin)) depicts night scenes.
