National Tree Planting Exercise — 国土緑化運動

This print was produced in connection with Japan's postwar national afforestation campaign (国土緑化運動), a government-led reforestation effort that began in the late 1940s and early 1950s to restore forests depleted by wartime timber demand. Commemorative prints commissioned for such campaigns were typically issued as posters or premiums through government ministries and prefectural forestry offices. The composition likely depicts a verdant mountain or hillside landscape that promotes the ideal of a reforested Japan, rendered in Hasui's characteristic meisho-e style with careful bokashi gradations representing sky and foliage. While propaganda in purpose, the print operates aesthetically within shin-hanga conventions: a skilled carver and printer would have applied the same technical standards—precise key-block lines, layered pigments on damp washi—as any commercial landscape edition.