Lake Biwa

Lake Biwa — Japan's largest freshwater lake, lying just east of Kyoto and historically central to the city's water supply and cultural imagination — has been a subject for landscape painting and printmaking for centuries. The lake's size and its relationship to the surrounding mountains create a landscape of unusual openness for inland Japan, the wide water offering vistas that feel almost oceanic. Kotozuka's print of Lake Biwa captures the particular quality of light over the great water expanse.