Senjō Cliff, Lake Towada (Senjōmaku, Towadako), from the series Collection of Scenic Views of Japan, Eastern Japan Edition (Nihon fūkei higaishi Nihon ten)

Senjō Cliff, Lake Towada (Senjōmaku, Towadako), from Kawase Hasui's Collection of Scenic Views of Japan, Eastern Japan Edition (Nihon fūkei higaishi Nihon ten) of 1933, depicts a section of the steep cliff face along Lake Towada, the large caldera lake straddling Aomori and Akita Prefectures in northern Honshu. The print is organized around the vertical mass of the Senjō cliff and the calm water at its base, with sky and distant hills receding through carefully graded bokashi printing. The image was produced in publisher Watanabe Shozaburo's Tokyo workshop, where the carvers handled the layered detail of rock and foliage and the printers managed the tonal modulations of water and sky required to give the scene its sense of altitude. The Art Institute of Chicago, which preserves this impression, identifies the print as part of Hasui's 1933 northern campaign for the Eastern Japan Edition, which gathered subjects from Tohoku and Hokkaido into a coherent shin-hanga regional series. Lake Towada had become a popular destination by the early Shōwa period thanks to improved road and rail connections, and visual representations of its cliffs, inlets, and surrounding forest contributed to its identity as a modern Japanese scenic site. Hasui's view at Senjōmaku exemplifies the way the shin-hanga movement reframed such places: not as picturesque novelties but as serious landscape subjects worthy of the same workshop care lavished on traditional famous places. The print continues to be appreciated for its disciplined composition, its tonal restraint, and its embodiment of Hasui's mature collaboration with Watanabe and his carvers and printers.