Late Spring — ゆく春

Yuku haru—literally departing spring—is a classical Japanese seasonal concept denoting the final days of spring before summer arrives. The subject carries an elegiac quality rooted in the awareness of transience and was a well-established theme in both poetry and painting long before Hasui's time. In this print, Hasui likely depicts the closing phase of the cherry blossom season—petals falling or already dispersed across still water—or the transitional moment when spring green begins to deepen toward summer. Water surfaces appear frequently in Hasui's late-spring compositions, allowing fallen petals to provide color incident against the reflective ground. The light characteristic of late April in central Japan—warm but diffuse under high cloud—softens shadows and reduces tonal contrast, effects Hasui's printers achieved through careful dilution of pigment and bokashi graduation across sky and water blocks. This is the primary impression of the Yuku haru design. The title's classical literary resonance, combined with Hasui's precise atmospheric observation, places the print within shin-hanga's broader project of reconnecting modern Japanese printmaking with pre-modern aesthetic traditions.