Evening Rain at a Lakeside Tearoom

This woodblock print depicts a traditional Japanese tearoom on a lakeside during evening rain, a subject type that showcases Hasui's mastery of atmospheric condition in the shin-hanga landscape genre. The composition likely positions the tearoom structure with its sheltering roof in the foreground or middle ground, with rain-dimpled lake water extending into a misty distance. Warm light escaping from paper shoji screens or a lantern within the tearoom provides the only warm tones in an otherwise cool blue-grey palette of rain and dusk. The technical challenge of printing rain—fine parallel lines in the key block printed over graduated wash—demanded close collaboration between Hasui and the Watanabe atelier's specialist printers. The unnumbered slug designates this as the base impression in the catalogued series of variants.