Lake Kishu

This print depicts a lake in the Kii Peninsula region of Kishu Province, present-day Wakayama Prefecture. Hasui traveled through the Kii Peninsula on sketch tours that yielded subjects outside the most commercially familiar routes, and the interior lakes of Kishu appear in several of his designs. The composition probably situates the viewer at water level with mountains or forested hills rising on the far bank, a spatial strategy Hasui favored to establish clear recession from immediate surface to distant landform. The palette would reflect the region's particular atmospheric character: deep greens of camphor and cedar, gray-blue water, and layered aerial haze softening the far shore. Printed by Watanabe Shozaburo's workshop using carved cherry-wood blocks and mineral pigments on washi, the image demonstrates Hasui's ability to translate observed landscape into structured pictorial space within the conventions of shin-hanga production, where each color required precise kento registration marks to maintain alignment across successive impressions.