Kawanishi in Tochigi Prefecture

Date:: 1947
Medium:: Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
Format:: Oban
Dimensions:: 35.6 × 25.4 cm
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo
Edition:: Published by Watanabe Shozaburo
Source:: Minneapolis Institute of Art

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

Kawanishi in Tochigi Prefecture, published in 1947, depicts a landscape in the Kawanishi district of Tochigi — likely the agricultural and river landscape along the Naka River corridor south of Utsunomiya. Tochigi's flat kanto plain landscape, with its wide river valleys and traditional farmhouse settlements, gave Hasui an opportunity for a broad, quietly pastoral composition in the immediate postwar period. The 1947 date places this among his recovery-period prints, when he returned to domestic landscape subjects after the disruptions of the wartime years.