Mt. Kasugatake in Shiga

A mountain landscape in Shiga Prefecture, the region surrounding Lake Biwa east of Kyoto. Kasugatake's silhouette would form the compositional spine, set against sky or distant water. Kasamatsu's mountain views generally employ flat planes of color — washes of green for forested slopes, paler grey-blue for distant ridges — rather than the linear ridgework of earlier ukiyo-e mountain prints. This treatment aligns him with his shin-hanga peers Hasui and Yoshida Hiroshi, both of whom translated Western landscape conventions into the woodblock idiom. Shiga subjects are less common in Kasamatsu's output than his Tokyo and coastal scenes, suggesting this print belongs either to a series of regional views or to a sketching journey undertaken to gather material for new designs.