Saishoin Pagoda-Temple in Snow, Hirosaki

This impression of the Saishoin snow scene belongs to a group of prints documenting varying states of the same carved blocks across the print run. The subject — the five-story Edo-period pagoda of Saishô-in in Hirosaki under a heavy snowfall — appears across multiple numbered impressions with subtle differences in the depth of the sky gradation, the density of snow rendering on architectural surfaces, and the tonal range achieved through the printer's application of pigment to the dampened washi sheet. Hasui traveled to Hirosaki and produced multiple Tohoku winter subjects for the Watanabe publishing house in the 1930s and 1940s, and the Saishoin pagoda became one of the defining images of that body of work.