Chûzenji, Utagahama

Utagahama is a stretch of beach on the northern shore of Lake Chuzenji in Nikko, set at roughly 1,270 metres elevation beneath the volcanic cone of Mount Nantai. The site is associated with Futarasan Shrine, whose Chugushi sub-shrine stands at the eastern end of the beach. Hasui's Chuzenji prints typically use the lake surface as a broad horizontal middle ground, with Nantai or its neighbouring peaks rising behind, and a foreground shoreline of pebbles, low pines, or a torii gate. The high-altitude light at Chuzenji — clear in autumn, often misted in spring and summer — gave Hasui repeated opportunities to use bokashi gradations across both sky and water and to register tonally close greens and blues without losing the silhouette of the mountain. Nikko was one of Hasui's most-visited regions; his Chuzenji and Utagahama designs sit alongside his Yumoto, Kegon, and shrine-precinct prints as a sustained twentieth-century treatment of the area in the meisho-e idiom.