Kintai bridge

The Kintai-kyo, the five-arched wooden bridge spanning the Nishiki River at Iwakuni in Yamaguchi Prefecture, was originally built in 1673 and has been a celebrated subject in Japanese landscape printmaking since the Edo period. Hasui's treatment likely shows the bridge in profile, its sequence of arches reflected in the river below, with the wooded slopes of Mount Yokoyama and Iwakuni Castle visible beyond. The composition would draw on the long horizontal format suited to oban prints, with careful registration required to align the bridge's repeating curves and the carver's fine lines for the timber lattice. Hasui frequently traveled to provincial sites for his Tabi miyage and Nihon fukei shu series, and Kintai bridge represents the kind of architectural landmark that linked his work to earlier ukiyo-e meisho traditions while expressing the shin-hanga interest in structures of cultural continuity. The print would have been issued through Watanabe Shozaburo, with bokashi gradations animating sky and water.