Kawaguchi

Kawaguchi most likely refers to the town of Kawaguchi in Saitama Prefecture, situated across the Arakawa River from Tokyo, or alternatively to the Kawaguchi lake district near Mount Fuji. The Saitama Kawaguchi was an iron-casting town on the northern periphery of the Tokyo metropolitan area, and a Hasui scene set here would probably depict the river or a quieter residential quarter rather than industrial facilities. Hasui documented the flat alluvial landscape of the Kantō plain in a number of compositions, treating its broad rivers, reed-lined banks, and low riverine villages with the same atmospheric attentiveness he brought to more celebrated scenic subjects. A twilight or early morning treatment would employ the bokashi gradation technique across a wide, flat sky — an atmospheric register that suited the open horizontal landscape of the Saitama lowlands.