Water conduit, a scene in Sado

Water conduit, a scene in Sado, dated 1921, records a wooden flume channeling water along a stone-built course on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan, a setting Kawase Hasui visited during the travels that produced the Souvenirs of Travel series. Rather than monumentalize the landscape, Hasui focuses on a working agricultural and engineering structure, treating the conduit as a subject worthy of the same attention earlier ukiyo-e artists had given to famous places. The composition emphasizes the diagonal of the channel and the textures of weathered timber, stone, and surrounding vegetation, rendered through carefully cut blocks and subtle bokashi shading characteristic of the shin-hanga method practiced in publisher Watanabe Shozaburo's Tokyo workshop. Sado Island had long been associated in Japanese cultural memory with exile, gold mining, and remote rural life, and Hasui's interest in such places signaled a shift in shin-hanga subject matter toward provinces and infrastructure rather than urban entertainment districts. Watanabe encouraged this kind of subject as part of the broader shin-hanga program: combining the workshop traditions of Edo-period printmaking with modern preferences for direct observation and contemporary travel. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds this impression, preserves the print as an example of Hasui's early collaboration with Watanabe and of the visual vocabulary the partnership was developing — close attention to atmosphere, a horizon kept low, and a willingness to find subject matter in the unremarkable. The print exemplifies how Hasui used regional travel to broaden the geographic scope of the shin-hanga movement while sustaining its technical foundations in traditional carving and printing.