Rain at Ushibori

Description

Ushibori is located further to the east of Tokyo and has been depicted in woodblock prints repeatedly, already starting with Katsushika Hokusai in his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series. These designs almost all depict a quiet landscape, with only one or a couple of people, usually boating the waterways nearby. The focus of the shin-hanga designs is usually on the interplay between the landscape, water and light, under the influence of time of day, seasons and weather. At the time Kawase Hasui visited Ushibori, it must already have been filled with more activity than implied in his prints. Besides the labor visible in the print, there is a simple fire lookout tower present, along with a warning bell. Such a tower would serve no purpose in a truly sparse area. Deliberately choosing to not let that draw too much attention, Kawase Hasui's prints instead focus on the effects of dusk (Dusk at Ushibori), snow, rain and clouds on the waterway depicted. In the current print there is strong rainfall, but the sky is not fully clouded, lending the print a sense of movement and calm activity, and a beauty that in real life might have felt impermanent. This Kawase Hasui print is part of a group of designs he first made around 1930 for the publisher cooperation Sakai-Kawaguchi. The woodblocks were destroyed during the war however, and after the war the rights for the design were transferred to publisher Shobisha, who has republished the designs from the 1950s onward with newly carved blocks. Kawase Hasui was involved in this process and the prints are originals, but the listing of the date of the first edition could be debated. Within the woodblock print community the years of the initial designs are used and that is followed here.