Spring at Pubyong Pavilion, Modan Viewpoint, Pyongyang, from the series "Eight Views of Korea" (Chosen hakkei, Heijo no haru (Botandai Fusekiro))

Spring at Pubyong Pavilion, Modan Viewpoint, Pyongyang (Heijo no haru, Botandai Fusekiro) was designed by Kawase Hasui in 1939 for the series Eight Views of Korea (Chosen hakkei) and is now in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago. The woodblock print depicts a pavilion above the Taedong River near Pyongyang, in what was then colonial Korea under Japanese rule, with cherry blossoms in flower and the river curving past the bluff below. Kawase Hasui builds the composition around the silhouette of the wooden pavilion, framed by blossoming trees and set against a green hillside that descends to the water. The Eight Views of Korea applied the long-established East Asian theme of eight views, originally derived from Chinese painting tradition, to a contemporary itinerary across the Korean Peninsula. As with Kawase Hasui's Japanese landscape series, the prints were issued by publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, whose Tokyo workshop coordinated the shin-hanga, or new prints, movement and translated the artist's on-site sketches into multi-block color prints. The Pyongyang scene reflects the period's expanded geographic reach for shin-hanga subjects, while retaining the genre's characteristic emphasis on weather, season, and architectural setting. Kawase Hasui's handling of the cherry blossoms and gentle river bend gives the print the lyrical, contemplative quality that defined his mature work, and the inclusion of the pavilion situates the scene within a longer cultural tradition of celebrated viewpoints, here rendered in the disciplined collaborative idiom developed by Watanabe Shozaburo for the shin-hanga market.