The Bay off Shinagawa (Shinagawa oki), from the series Twelve Scenes of Tokyo (Tôkyô jûnidai)

Part of Hasui's Twelve Scenes of Tokyo (Tôkyô jûnidai) series, published by Watanabe Shôzaburô, this print depicts the waters of Tokyo Bay as seen from the historic district of Shinagawa, once the first post-station on the Tôkaidô highway south of Edo. The composition likely places the viewer at water level or along the shoreline, with fishing boats or small craft anchored in the sheltered bay. Hasui frequently employed wide horizontal registrations of sky and water in coastal scenes, using graduated bokashi to capture the luminous quality of open sky over water. By the time of this series—likely the 1920s—Shinagawa had become part of metropolitan Tokyo, yet retained working fishing communities alongside modern port facilities. The juxtaposition of traditional maritime life with encroaching industrialization was a recurring tension in Hasui's Tokyo subjects, rendered in the refined chromatic palette and careful gradations that defined shin-hanga production at Watanabe's workshop.