Summer In Ikaho

A second composition or state depicting Ikaho, the hot-spring town in Gunma Prefecture whose terraced stone staircase and tiered inn buildings provided Hasui with a distinctively vertical subject. This variant may represent a reworked design, a different edition, or an alternative viewpoint of the same resort environment. Hasui returned repeatedly to favored locations, producing related designs that differ in season, time of day, or compositional framing. A summer rendering would foreground the dense green of the surrounding cedar and oak forest, with the stepped street receding into the hillside. The print likely uses multiple woodblocks to render the tonal complexity of summer foliage, with bokashi gradations conveying humid atmospheric haze characteristic of the mountain resort in July or August. The oban format standard to Hasui's landscape series would frame the composition to emphasize the steep topography.