Hasui 巴水: Winter Moon over Toyama Plain 戸山ヶ原

Artist: Kawase Hasui 巴水
Title: Winter Moon over Toyama Plain 戸山ヶ原 Fuyu no tsuki (Toyomagahara)
Date: 1931, Winter 昭和六年十二月 (this edition is postwar)

The full moon glows with mesmerizing power between branches of trees and their elegant winter silhouettes. A soft mist obscures the distant city lights, which shine with an unfaded yellow gleam. The coloration of the foreground blends beautifully from earth to mist, and then to sky. Hasui depicted a very similar view in 1920. About that 1920 design, he wrote: “I wanted to depict the winter moon... Even though night had just fallen, the scene was deserted in the cold, withered and wintry group of trees, eerie in the blurred lights visible in the distant forest. The moon casts a pale blue light.” The Toyama Plain is today part of Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward and no doubt is today much more like a concrete forest compared to this serene view of nature.

This is from the postwar, lifetime edition that was published by Doi Hangaten after WWII.  Please note that there are very recent woodblock printed reproductions of this design that are surfacing on the market, and include a rather poor facsimile of the earliest Doi Sadaichi seal at left. One can tell at a glance that those works are recently printed and are completely different, and the feeling is more like a poster reproduction of this original design.

Condition: Very good impression, color and condition.
Dimensions: ôban 39 x 26.3 cm
Publisher: Doi Hangaten
Literature: Hotei #260. See LACMA, MFA Boston, Chazen, Saint Louis Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago collections online.
Signature: Hasui

SKU: HAS659