Lake Kawaguchi

Lake Kawaguchi, one of the Fuji Goko or Five Lakes on the northern slopes of Mount Fuji, is the most accessible of the group and a recurring subject for Hasui across his career. Views from the lake characteristically place Fuji in the upper register, with the lake surface in the foreground often rendering an inverted reflection of the mountain — a motif known as sakasa-Fuji that printmakers from Hokusai onward had exploited. Hasui's Kawaguchi designs typically use bokashi gradations to model both the snow on Fuji's upper cone and the graduated sky behind it, while the lake is built up from successive flat impressions tinted toward the foreground. The composition usually includes small fishing boats, bare or seasonal trees, and a thin strip of opposite shore to give the water its scale. Within his wider Fuji output, the Kawaguchi prints sit alongside views from Yamanaka, Motosu, and Tagonoura, forming a twentieth-century reworking of Fuji subjects in the meisho-e tradition through the shin-hanga collaboration of designer, carver, and printer.