Spring evening in Ueno Park, Tokyo

Ueno Park has been the principal hanami site in Tokyo since the Edo period, when Tokugawa Iemitsu had cherries planted at Kan'ei-ji. Kasamatsu's print combines two of his characteristic registers — the spring blossom subject and the evening scene — by depicting the park after dark, when paper lanterns are lit beneath the cherry trees. The composition foregrounds a path, a tea-house, or a row of lanterns receding under the canopy, with blossoms printed in soft pinks against a deeper ground. Bokashi is used both for the night sky and for the diffuse glow under the lanterns. Spring evenings at Ueno had been a print subject through Hiroshige and Kiyochika; Kasamatsu's twentieth-century version retains the meisho-e framing but draws on shin-hanga interest in artificial light. Kasamatsu was born in nearby Asakusa in 1898 and would have known the park from childhood.