The Washington Monument on the Potomac River

This print documents Hasui's encounter with an American landmark, likely produced in connection with his 1956 visit to the United States during cultural exchange activities. The Washington Monument—a 169-meter granite obelisk completed in 1884—stands on the National Mall, and from the Tidal Basin its reflection falls across open water framed by the surrounding parkland. Hasui translated the subject through the technical conventions he had refined over three decades of Japanese landscape work: graduated bokashi rendering a sky that shifts from deep color at the zenith to pale warmth near the horizon, the obelisk's reflection elongated on the water's surface, and surrounding trees reduced to essential silhouette. The print represents an unusual subject for a printmaker whose career was built on Japanese meisho, and demonstrates how shin-hanga compositional strategies—foreground framing element, atmospheric sky, reflective water—transferred without fundamental adjustment to Western monumental architecture.