Lake Matsubara on a Morning, Shinshu

This print depicts Lake Matsubara in the Shinshu region of Nagano Prefecture at dawn, a subject Hasui returned to across multiple editions. The lake sits at the foot of Mount Asama, and morning compositions of this site typically render the still water surface as a reflective plane capturing the pale tones of early light. Hasui employed gradated bokashi to suggest the transition from night into day, with cool blues and grays yielding to warmer tones near the horizon. Pine trees commonly frame the shoreline in this composition, their silhouettes providing vertical counterpoint to the horizontal water. This impression is one of several known states or editions of the Matsubara morning subject, indicating strong commercial demand. The print was likely published by Kawaguchi Shozaburo's Watanabe Woodblock Print Shop, which distributed Hasui's landscape series through the 1920s and 1930s. Variations across editions often show subtle differences in sky gradation, ink density, and the rendering of foliage, reflecting the hands of different printers working from the original keyblock.