Senjô plain, Nikkô

Depiction of Senjogahara, the elevated marshland plateau within Nikko National Park in Tochigi Prefecture, formed by the lava flows of Mount Nantai and traversed by the Yukawa river. Hasui visited Nikko on multiple sketching trips and produced several prints of its volcanic landscape, including views of Lake Chuzenji and Kegon Falls. Senjogahara presented a distinctive subject — an open expanse of grasses with the silhouette of Nantai or the surrounding peaks closing the middle distance — a flatter compositional arrangement than the deeply recessed mountain valleys typical of his Japanese alpine views. The print likely employs broad bokashi gradations to render the sky and the wash of distant slopes, with foreground reeds picked out in sharper sumi outline. Senjogahara is associated in Japanese landscape iconography with autumn grasses and migrating birds, and a Hasui treatment would draw on this seasonal vocabulary. The Nikko subjects sit alongside his broader programme of meisho-e covering the landscapes most strongly identified with classical and modern Japanese travel writing.