Semi onsen

Semi Onsen is a hot spring village in Yamagata Prefecture, a quiet inland resort whose wooden ryokan and bath houses cluster along a narrow valley. Kasamatsu likely depicts the settlement in winter or evening, with steam rising against snowfall or low light—conditions that recur throughout his oeuvre, which favored atmospheric weather over clear noon scenes. The composition would balance dark eaves and tiled roofs against the white of accumulated snow, with bokashi handling the soft transitions of mist and sky. Onsen subjects were common in shin-hanga, drawing on the meisho-e tradition's interest in named places associated with travel and seasonal experience. Kasamatsu's career bridged shin-hanga publishing under Watanabe Shozaburo and a later self-publishing phase aligned with sosaku-hanga values; village and resort subjects appear in both periods, registering small communities at moments of stillness rather than activity.