Kasuga Shrine, Nara, from the series "Collection of Scenic Views of Japan II, Kansai Edition" (Nihon fukei shu II Kansai hen, Nara Kasuga taisha)

Kasuga Shrine, Nara (Nara Kasuga taisha), from Kawase Hasui's Collection of Scenic Views of Japan II, Kansai Edition (Nihon fukei shu II Kansai hen) of 1933, depicts the approach to Kasuga Taisha, the great Shinto shrine of the Fujiwara clan founded in the eighth century in the forested hills east of Nara. The print emphasizes the long avenue of stone lanterns and the deep tree cover characteristic of the shrine's sacred grove. Hasui builds the composition from carefully cut blocks, in which the rhythm of lanterns and tree trunks creates a perspectival recession through the printed surface. The bokashi gradations in the ground and atmosphere were produced by printers in publisher Watanabe Shozaburo's Tokyo workshop, where the team translated Hasui's sketches and watercolor studies into the multi-block sequence needed for the finished impression. The Kansai Edition extended the regional ambitions of the earlier Souvenirs of Travel series and Selection of Views of Japan, offering collectors a coherent set of Kyoto, Nara, Osaka, and adjacent subjects. The Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves this impression, situates the print within the early 1930s ambition of shin-hanga to act as a systematic visual gazetteer of contemporary Japan. Kasuga's deer, sacred grove, and lantern-lined paths had been depicted in earlier Japanese painting and printmaking, but Hasui's contribution reframes the site through the quieter, more atmospheric idiom that he and Watanabe had cultivated together over more than a decade. The print embodies shin-hanga's combination of traditional subject and modern observation.