Noon - Lake and Shinzan

This composition pairs Showa Shinzan with the still surface of Lake Toya at midday, a moment when light is at its flattest and shadow recedes. Hashimoto likely structures the print in clear horizontal bands — water in the foreground, the volcanic dome rising mid-frame, sky beyond — using bokashi along the water and sky edges to register the high, even illumination of noon. His architectural training shows in the precise placement of the dome as a compositional anchor, treated as a built form rather than a picturesque peak. As a sosaku-hanga artist working through the postwar decades, Hashimoto carved and printed every block on washi, registering each color pass with a baren. The Lake Toya subjects sit alongside his Hokkaido travel work, complementing the architectural prints from Kyoto, Nara, and the castle towers that form the core of his catalogue.