Kawase Hasui

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) was one of the most important Japanese woodblock print artists of the twentieth century and a central figure in the shin-hanga ("new prints") movement that revitalized traditional ukiyo-e printmaking in modern Japan. Over a career spanning nearly four decades, he created more than six hundred woodblock print designs, earning him the epithets "Artist of Snow" and "Hiroshige of the Showa Era" for his masterful depictions of Japanese landscapes in rain, snow, moonlight, and mist.

Born Kawase Bunjiro on May 18, 1883, in Shiba Ward, Tokyo, Hasui grew up in a family that ran a silk braiding and thread wholesale business. His paternal uncle was the noted Meiji-era author and journalist Kanagaki Robun. As a child, Hasui suffered from meningitis, which left him with a quiet and introspective temperament. He showed an early passion for art but was expected to take over the family business. When the business went bankrupt around 1909, Hasui was finally free to pursue his artistic ambitions at the age of twenty-six.

Hasui's artistic training followed an indirect path. He initially studied painting under Aoyanagi Bokusen beginning in 1897, then with Araki Kan'yu from 1902. Around 1908, he approached the renowned nihonga master Kaburagi Kiyokata for instruction, but Kiyokata turned him away, calling him a late starter and advising him to study Western-style painting first. Hasui spent two years studying oil painting and watercolor under Okada Saburosuke before Kiyokata accepted him as a pupil around 1910. It was Kiyokata who bestowed upon him the art name "Hasui," meaning "spring water." Under Kiyokata's tutelage, Hasui studied ukiyo-e techniques and nihonga painting, and worked as an illustrator for magazines, books, and advertisements.

Hasui's career as a woodblock print designer began in August 1918, when he was inspired by an exhibition of Ito Shinsui's Eight Views of Lake Biwa. He approached Shinsui's publisher, Watanabe Shozaburo, who commissioned three experimental prints based on sketches Hasui had made at Shiobara. The success of these first designs launched a prolific partnership that would last for the rest of Hasui's life. In 1919, he produced the Twelve Scenes of Tokyo, Eight Views of the Southeast, and began the sixteen-print Souvenirs of Travel, First Series. By 1923, he had already created over one hundred landscape designs.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1, 1923, proved catastrophic for Hasui. He lost his home and one hundred eighty-eight accumulated sketchbooks. Watanabe's entire workshop was also destroyed, including all woodblocks, the complete print inventory, and unsold prints from the unfinished Collection of Scenes of Japan series. Pre-earthquake prints by Hasui are consequently among the rarest and most sought-after shin-hanga. Despite this devastating loss, Watanabe financed a one-hundred-and-two-day sketching trip for Hasui through the Hokuriku, San'in, and San'yo regions later that year, the longest journey of his career. The sketches from this trip formed the basis for the twenty-nine prints of the Souvenirs of Travel, Third Series, published between 1924 and 1929.

During the late 1920s and 1930s, Hasui entered his most productive period. He created the Twenty Views of Tokyo between 1925 and 1930, which includes such iconic images as Zojoji Temple in Shiba, as well as the Selection of Views of Japan and the Collection of Scenic Views of Japan in both Eastern Japan and Kansai editions. While Watanabe remained his primary publisher throughout, Hasui also worked with several other publishers during this period, including Kawaguchi, Doi Teikichi, Iida, and Shiota Takezo. In 1939, he was invited by the Government Railways of Korea to visit the Korean Peninsula, resulting in the Eight Views of Korea series published by Watanabe.

The Second World War severely disrupted Hasui's career. The Japanese government controlled art production, and his peaceful landscape subjects were considered unsuitable for the wartime nationalist atmosphere. His Tokyo home was destroyed a second time by Allied firebombing in 1945, and he spent much of the war years in Shiobara, north of Tokyo. Despite these hardships, the few prints he produced during this era depicted remarkably peaceful scenes of traditional Japan.

Hasui's style is defined by his extraordinary ability to capture atmosphere and mood in landscape scenes. Working within the shin-hanga collaborative system, he designed the prints while professional carvers and printers at the Watanabe workshop executed the woodblocks and printing under his supervision. His subjects were almost exclusively landscapes—temples, shrines, coastlines, village streets, and famous scenic views throughout Japan. Of his more than six hundred designs, over four hundred were landscapes. Hasui traveled extensively throughout Japan, sketching on location with detailed color notations that he later refined into finished designs at his studio. Human figures in his compositions are typically absent or minimal, allowing the natural environment to dominate. His palette featured rich, dense colors and solid forms, blending the traditional Japanese aesthetic of the ukiyo-e landscape tradition with the Western realism he had learned from Okada Saburosuke.

After the war, the Japanese government used Hasui's work to represent a gentler side of Japan in tourist publications. In 1953, the Committee for Preservation of Intangible Cultural Treasures commissioned him to create Snow at Zojoji Temple, with the entire printmaking process documented by woodblock historian Narazaki Muneshige. The resulting print was designated an Intangible Cultural Asset. In 1956, Hasui was designated a Living National Treasure by the Japanese government, becoming the first woodblock print artist to receive this distinction.

Hasui completed his final design, Hall of the Golden Hue, Hiraizumi, while hospitalized with cancer in 1957. He did not live to see the finished print. He died on November 7, 1957, at the age of seventy-four. The first edition of his last print was distributed by his widow at a memorial service held one hundred days after his death. Today, his works are held in major museum collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. His prints continue to be among the most recognized and collected examples of Japanese woodblock printmaking.