Early Morning at Okayama Castle

This impression is one of several Hasui prints depicting Okayama Castle, the fifteenth-century fortress known as Ujo, or Crow Castle, for its distinctive black-lacquered wooden exterior. At early morning the castle's dark walls and tiered rooflines emerge from low mist along the Asahi River, likely with a pale, cool sky behind. Hasui would have used precise key block registration to capture the castle's complex silhouette against the lighter ground of the morning sky, while [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations in the water and fog convey the humid stillness of dawn. Multiple impressions of this subject reflect either separate printings from the same blocks, revisions to the design, or publication by different houses at different dates. The subject connects to the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of depicting Japan's famous castles within their seasonal landscape context.