Morning at Mito Beach (MItohama no asa)

MItohama no asa

Bokashi Nishiki-e Moku-hanga Kento Baren Sumi

Date:: December 1953
Medium:: Color woodblock print
Format:: Oban
Dimensions:: 24.2 × 36.7 cm
Publisher:: Watanabe Shozaburo
Edition:: Published by Watanabe Shozaburo
Source:: Art Institute of Chicago

Typical Price

Edition period is the primary value driver for Hasui prints. Pre-war lifetime editions with the Watanabe copyright seal (A through D types) consistently achieve 3–5× the price of posthumous reprints of the same design. Condition is the second key factor — unfaded colors, full margins, and absence of foxing or staining are essential. Subject matter (snow > rain > night > other) provides a further modifier within each edition tier. This postwar design (1946–1957) bears the small 6mm J-seal on lifetime impressions — authentic but from the artist's final decade, when block quality had declined from peak period.

Pre-war lifetime edition (Watanabe seal, 1926–1944): $1,000–$4,000
Postwar lifetime edition (J-seal, 1946–1957): $400–$1,500
Posthumous/Heisei edition (seal K/I, 1957–present): $150–$600

Description

Morning at Mito Beach, published in December 1953, depicts the shoreline at Mitohama on the Ise Bay coast in Mie Prefecture under the clear light of early morning — a late-career print showing Hasui's sustained engagement with coastal dawn subjects. The December date places this among his final productive years; by 1953 Hasui's work carried a contemplative gravity, his coastal morning scenes distilling decades of atmospheric observation into compositions of serene clarity. The pale morning light on the shore's sand and the rhythmic line of the sea horizon represent his mature coastal aesthetic at its most refined.