Kawase Hasui – Snow at Inokashira Benten Shrine Precint (Hasui Kawase – Shatô no Yuki)

Original woodblock print. The first edition of this design was published in 1929. The current print was printed in the Reiwa period (2019 – present).

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 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.

Image size (excluding margins): 22.0 * 35.0 cm (8.7 * 13.8 in).

The print is in excellent condition.

The pictures shown here are from the print itself.

References: K.H. Brown, Visions of Japan. Kawase Hasui’s masterpieces, 2004, p. 29; K.H. Brown, Kawase Hasui. The Complete Woodblock Prints, nr. 187, 2003, p. 378.

See an overview of Kawase Hasui's woodblock prints