Morning at Takamatsu (Takamatsu no asa)

Takamatsu no asa (Morning at Takamatsu) depicts the port city on Shikoku facing the Seto Inland Sea at the earliest hours of daylight, when mist and calm water define the atmosphere. Takamatsu's historic castle stood at the edge of the sea — its pine-covered ramparts a familiar silhouette in imagery of the area — and the water approach would have given Hasui a clean horizontal plane on which to build the composition's light effects. The Seto Inland Sea, sheltered by hundreds of islands, has a stillness in calm weather that made it suitable for the kind of reflective water surface Hasui favored. In shin-hanga production, the printer worked with dampened washi paper and a baren to achieve smooth tonal transitions across the sky and sea zones, requiring consistent technique across each impression. The inclusion of the Japanese title in the slug indicates this may be the primary published version from the Watanabe atelier, where Japanese-language titles often appeared on cartouches within the print's margin. The oban format was standard for Hasui's series work.