Snow at Sekiguchi

Among the several woodblock prints Hasui made of the Sekiguchi district in winter, this impression belongs to a group that documents the same scene across different printing periods and possibly different states of the woodblock. The Sekiguchi area in Bunkyo, traversed by the upper Kanda River, provided a subject combining the organic irregularity of a river valley with the layered geometry of traditional rooftops and garden walls. Snow at Sekiguchi prints typically show overcast skies rendered through carefully graded bokashi, ground surfaces where footpaths or stone are barely visible through the snow, and trees in their bare winter state with snow resting along the upper edge of branches. These prints represent the meisho-e tradition applied to an unfamous place — Sekiguchi was never a celebrated destination — elevated by Hasui's compositional attention and by the season that makes any landscape unfamiliar.