Lake Kishu

Kishu, the historical name for present-day Wakayama and southern Mie Prefectures, contained several celebrated lake and coastal landscapes within the dense forest of the Kii Peninsula. This print, a second catalogued Lake Kishu design by Hasui, likely depicts a still mountain lake in the peninsula's interior, framed by cedar or cypress woodland characteristic of the region. The Kii Peninsula's deep-forested ridges and cloud-shrouded hillsides offered material for meisho-e subjects less commercially familiar than the Fuji Five Lakes, giving such prints a quality of discovery. The numeral suffix suggests this is a compositional variant or later state. Technical qualities typical of Hasui's lacustrine prints include delicate graduated bokashi across a wide sky field and careful management of water reflections using split-register printing across multiple blocks. Printed in oban format on dampened washi, the image exemplifies Hasui's method of rendering enclosed water and surrounding forest in layered spatial recession.