Snow at Inokashira Benten Shrine Precint (2026)

Description

The Inokashira Benten Shrine is located on an island in a lake to the West of Tokyo. It has been relatively rare for woodblock print artists to depict it, which might be surprising when seeing the impressive depiction by Kawase Hasui. As always, his mastery of snowscapes is unmistakeble, in this case showing a calm and serene scene with the Benten Shrine surrounded by snow, and reflected in the lake below it. This Kawase Hasui 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.