Gozanoishi Shrine at Lake Tazawa, from the series "Souvenirs of Travel, Third Series" (Tabi miyage dai sanshu, Tazawako Gozanoishi)

Gozanoishi Shrine at Lake Tazawa (Tazawako Gozanoishi), from Kawase Hasui's Souvenirs of Travel, Third Series (Tabi miyage dai sanshū) of 1926, presents the small shrine and torii at Lake Tazawa in present-day Akita Prefecture against the still, deep blue of one of Japan's most distinctive caldera lakes. Lake Tazawa is the country's deepest lake, and Hasui responds to this hidden depth by treating the water as a broad, almost monochromatic field that absorbs surrounding light. The vermilion torii anchors the composition, providing the saturated chromatic note around which the cooler tones of water, foliage, and sky are organized. The print was issued by publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, whose Tokyo workshop produced the entire Tabi miyage program over several years. The carvers translated Hasui's preliminary sketch into multiple blocks for the carefully registered colors, while the printers managed the [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations across the lake surface that give the water its sense of weight and stillness. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, preserves the print as an example of how Hasui used regional travel to expand the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) repertoire to include the Tohoku region's volcanic lakes and shrines. Gozanoishi Shrine had its own local devotional history and connection to legends surrounding the lake, but Hasui presents the structure as an unhurried feature of the landscape rather than as the focus of a narrative or pilgrimage scene. The print's simplicity and concentration on color relationships reflect the maturity Hasui's collaboration with Watanabe had reached by the mid-1920s.