Winter Moon at Toyamagahara — 戸山ヶ原

This fifth impression of Winter Moon at Toyamagahara represents continued commercial demand for one of Hasui's well-received nocturnal winter compositions. The subject — the former military parade grounds at Toyamagahara in Tokyo's Shinjuku district viewed under winter moonlight — was reprinted across several decades under Watanabe Shozaburo's publishing house and under subsequent arrangements as the business changed hands. Across the multiple printings of this design, the sky's gradated indigo may shift in hue from blue-black toward grey-blue, and the shadows cast by bare trees across the snow surface vary in their distinctness from one run to the next. In each version, the composition's essential character remains: a horizontal expanse of snowy ground, a line of bare trees breaking the mid-ground, and the gradated winter night sky above, all printed on dampened washi to allow pigments to spread slightly into the paper's surface fibers.