1883–1957
Kawase Hasui川瀬巴水
Hasui walked Japan with a sketchbook for forty years and became the great landscape poet of the new print — snow at temple gates, rain on lantern-lit streets, dusk on quiet canals. The 1923 earthquake destroyed his early blocks and sketchbooks; he simply began again. Our collection holds his designs published through 1930, cleared by publication year — the artist’s later death date bars nothing here.
The workshop
Nearly everything was published by Watanabe Shōzaburō, whose carvers and printers built Hasui’s snows from gradient upon hand-wiped gradient. Watanabe’s workshop is the reason shin-hanga exists; Hasui is the reason it is loved.
