Winter Moon

This second impression of Hasui's Winter Moon composition shows a snow-covered Japanese landscape under moonlight, one of the recurring compositional types in his oeuvre. The moon in his nocturnal prints is rarely depicted directly as a circle in the sky but implied through the reflected light it casts on snow, still water, and cloud. The bokashi gradation applied to the night sky — deepest at the top of the composition, lightening toward the horizon or around the moon's implied position — required the printer to maintain tonal consistency across all impressions in the run. Surviving impressions of the same Winter Moon design differ in the depth of the night sky tone and the crispness of snow highlights, differences arising from variations in baren pressure and pigment dilution between print runs. Bare trees, thatched rooftops, or a path through a village provide compositional structure that the cold nocturnal light illuminates selectively.