Snow at Inokashira Benten Shrine Precint (2026)

Description

The Inokashira 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 unmistakable, 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 publisher cooperative Sakai-Kawaguchi. The woodblocks were destroyed during the war, however, and after the war the rights to the design were transferred to publisher Shobisha, who 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 dating of the first edition may be debated. Within the woodblock print community, the years of the initial designs are used and that is followed here.