Mountain lake in early winter

Mountain lake in early winter sets a still-water surface against surrounding hills at the moment when first frost has reached elevation but the lake itself remains liquid. The composition likely divides into the dark mass of forested slopes -- carved with Sasajima's characteristic gouge clusters -- and the broad horizontal of the water, which would carry less ink and read as the print's quiet centre. [Sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) practitioners such as Sasajima used [washi](/glossary/washi)'s natural tone as a working colour, so the lake may be the unprinted sheet itself. Snow-touched ridges might be picked out in narrow [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations or, more characteristically for Sasajima, in flat reserved areas. The print belongs to a broad seasonal-landscape strand in his work that ran alongside his temple architecture. As with all his output, every block was designed, carved, and pulled by Sasajima's own hand, the principle of artist-as-complete-maker that his teacher Onchi Koshiro had codified for the creative-print movement.