Himeji Castle in early spring

A counterpart to the snow Himeji, this print captures the same Shirasagi keep at the moment cherry trees in the outer baileys come into bud or early bloom. Hashimoto's early-spring castle compositions typically angle the tenshu against a flowering branch in the foreground, using the contrast between the rigid white architecture and the softer mass of pale pink blossom to organize the picture plane. The technique relies on multiple impressions: a key block carrying architectural outline, separate blocks for the layered roof tiles, and one or more bokashi-printed blocks for the gradient sky and the flush of pink across the cherry mass. Himeji had been depicted by woodblock artists since the Edo period, but Hashimoto's mid-twentieth-century treatment is distinctly sosaku-hanga in feel — the carving is visibly the artist's own hand rather than that of a professional horishi, and the printing favors flat planes of color over the graduated naturalism that shin-hanga contemporaries such as Hasui pursued in their own castle subjects.