NARUSAWA NO FUJI (Mt. Fuji, Narusawa)

This print depicts Mount Fuji as seen from Narusawa, a village on the volcano's northwestern flank in Yamanashi Prefecture, at the edge of the Aokigahara lava forest. Hasui likely frames the mountain's symmetrical cone rising above a foreground of dense conifer silhouettes, a compositional approach that grounds the iconic peak in its immediate environment rather than abstracting it into symbol. The print belongs to a long tradition of Fuji meisho-e and demonstrates the shin-hanga emphasis on atmospheric rendering: graduated bokashi washes articulate the sky's tonal shift from pale horizon to deep zenith, while the cold-season light bleaches Fuji's upper slopes to near-white against a clear or lightly clouded field. Narusawa's forested terrain gives Hasui a darker, more enclosed foreground than coastal or open-plain Fuji views, lending the composition a sense of quiet enclosure.