Moon Over Kiyosumi Garden

Kiyosumi-teien in Tokyo's Fukagawa district, originally developed as a private garden for the Iwasaki family and later donated to the city, became one of Hasui's recurring garden subjects. This print, likely the foundational or earliest composition in the series, depicts the garden's large pond under moonlight, with water reflections and the careful placement of karetaki dry waterfall stones providing compositional structure. The garden's famous collection of named stones — Kiso stone, Shikoku slate, Tsugaru granite — appear as dark masses at the water's edge. Hasui's treatment of the night sky would employ progressive bokashi in deep indigo and blue-black tones, with the moon either appearing directly in the upper register or implied through the bright patch of reflected light on the pond's surface. The print exemplifies the shin-hanga movement's commitment to traditional woodblock technique applied to contemporary Meiji and Taisho period garden spaces.