Snow in Those Good Old Days

This print belongs to Ohtsu's recurring meditation on the rural Japan of his youth, framed through the seasonal lens of deep winter. The composition almost certainly centers on a thatched-roof farmhouse or hamlet blanketed in snow, with the muffled palette and softened edges that [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation lends to overcast skies and snow-covered ground. The title's overt nostalgia — "those good old days" — signals Ohtsu's conscious project of preserving a vanishing countryside in print form. Technically, the work likely uses the blank [washi](/glossary/washi) surface itself as the principal white, with delicate keyblock outlines suggesting eaves, fence lines, and bare branches. Multiple light gray and blue impressions, applied with the [baren](/glossary/baren) in graded passes, would model the snow's volume without darkening it. Within Ohtsu's body of snow scenes, this is among his most explicitly elegiac titles, placing the emotional content above any specific named locale and inviting the viewer to project their own remembered winter onto the image.