Towards a Blue Mountain

This landscape depicts a view across open terrain toward a distant mountain rendered in cool blue tones — a compositional type Hasui used for several regional subjects across Japan. The title suggests the mountain occupies the far horizon, with foreground elements such as a road, rice paddies, or open fields leading the viewer's eye through the composition. Distant mountains rendered in progressively lighter, cooler pigments follow the Japanese landscape painting convention of enbō (atmospheric perspective), translating a spatial device from ink painting into the multi-block woodblock medium. Smooth bokashi transitions across large sky and mountain blocks were technically demanding and represent some of the more carefully registered work in the Watanabe catalog. The print belongs to the shin-hanga tradition of travel landscapes that invited urban viewers to imaginatively traverse Japan's countryside, functioning simultaneously as souvenir, aesthetic object, and regional documentation.