Sakuradamon, Shôwa period, dated 1928

Dated 1928, this Showa-period print of Sakuradamon was produced during a prolific phase of Hasui's career. By the late 1920s, his collaboration with publisher Watanabe Shozaburo had yielded hundreds of designs and established a clear technical approach: deep sky gradations produced through multiple-pass bokashi printing, close attention to the reflective properties of water and wet stone, and a palette that balanced warm architectural tones against cool atmospheric backgrounds. Sakuradamon, the surviving masugata gate complex at the Imperial Palace, provided a subject that combined historic gravitas with strong architectural geometry. The 1928 date situates the print within the early Showa era, a period of rapid urban modernization during which Hasui's landscapes carried documentary as well as aesthetic value, recording the continued presence of Edo-period structures within an increasingly industrialized city. The washi substrate and water-based pigments used in shin-hanga production gave the print surfaces a luminosity absent from Western oil or lithographic prints of comparable subjects.