Kankai Pavilion, Wakaura Beach (Wakaura Kankaikaku)

Date:: 1950
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo

Edition:

Published by Watanabe Shozaburo

Source:

Typical Price

Edition period is the primary value driver for Hasui prints. Pre-war lifetime editions with the Watanabe copyright seal (A through D types) consistently achieve 3–5× the price of posthumous reprints of the same design. Condition is the second key factor — unfaded colors, full margins, and absence of foxing or staining are essential. Subject matter (snow > rain > night > other) provides a further modifier within each edition tier. This postwar design (1946–1957) bears the small 6mm J-seal on lifetime impressions — authentic but from the artist's final decade, when block quality had declined from peak period.

Pre-war lifetime edition (Watanabe seal, 1926–1944): $1,000–$4,000
Postwar lifetime edition (J-seal, 1946–1957): $400–$1,500
Posthumous/Heisei edition (seal K/I, 1957–present): $150–$600

Description

Kankai Pavilion at Wakaura Beach, published in 1950, depicts the Kankaikaku — the pavilion overlooking Waka Bay near Wakayama city — a scenic viewing platform above the pine-covered islands of Waka Inlet where the Seto Inland Sea transitions to the Pacific approaches. Wakaura has been celebrated since ancient times for its scenery (it appears in the Man'yoshu), and the pavilion's elevated position above the curved inlet with its pine-topped islets gave Hasui a subject combining classical Japanese landscape elements with the atmospheric quality of the Wakayama coast. The 1950 date places this among his postwar revisits to the Kansai region's celebrated scenic sites.