Yoshino Kumano National Park — 国立吉野熊野

This second composition from Kawase Hasui's Yoshino-Kumano National Park group addresses a different aspect of the park's extensive and varied terrain. Yoshino-Kumano encompasses distinct landscape types: alpine meadows and rocky peaks along the Omine Range, dense sugi forest along the Kumano pilgrimage routes, and eroded volcanic headlands along the Owase and Kumano coastlines. Hasui's coastal compositions typically feature strong horizontal banding — dark foreground rock in the lower register, intensely blue or blue-green water in the middle ground, and a luminous [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) sky — while interior mountain scenes use vertical compositions with forested ridgelines stepping back into atmospheric haze. Printed in Hasui's mature style of the late 1930s and 1940s, the image is characterized by bold, clearly bounded color areas, controlled use of unpigmented [washi](/glossary/washi) reserve for pale forms, and the selective inclusion of a solitary figure or distant farmhouse to establish scale within the landscape.