Lake Among Hakone mountains

A view of one of the lakes set within the Hakone caldera, southwest of Tokyo. The Hakone region, with its volcanic peaks and reflective waters, had long figured in Japanese landscape printing — Hokusai and Hiroshige both treated it as meisho-e — but Sasajima's sosaku-hanga handling departs from those Edo-period precedents. Rather than the layered atmospheric perspectives of nineteenth-century woodblock prints, his print likely reduces the mountains to interlocking dark forms, with the lake surface rendered as a band of reserved washi or restrained color. Bokashi gradation, if used, would mark the transition between water and shore. The cherry block's grain may register visibly in the printed areas, a deliberate trace of the carving process that Sasajima, following Onchi's teaching, embraced rather than concealed. He cut and printed every impression himself by baren. The Hakone subject sits at the intersection of his landscape practice and the historical weight of Japanese print tradition, treated with the sculptural carving that defined his work.