Rain at Ushibori

Description

Ushibori is located farther 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 on 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 not to let that draw too much attention, Kawase Hasui's prints instead focus on the effects of dusk (see 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. The present woodblock print is part of a group of designs he first made around 1930 for the publishing partnership Sakai-Kawaguchi. The woodblocks were destroyed during the war, and after the war the rights to the designs were transferred to the publisher Shobisha. With the involvement of Kawase Hasui, new woodblocks were carved for the designs in the 1950s, and Shobisha has published them from the 1950s onward to the present day. Listing the date of the first edition in the 1950s might be more accurate, but within the woodblock print community and literature the years of the initial designs are commonly used.