Details

In Winter Moon over Toyama Plain, Kawase Hasui conjures a landscape suffused with tranquility and lunar clarity. A pale winter moon hovers just above the horizon, suspended like a pearl in the cool blue sky, partially embraced by the delicate lattice of bare branches. Below, the Toyama Plain stretches out in layered quietude—damp, still, and luminous with soft mist. Pools of standing water mirror the pale glow, capturing a fleeting sliver of sky within the frozen hush of earth.

The print’s sparseness evokes not absence, but presence—an invitation to observe what silence reveals. Hasui’s restrained palette of blues and muted browns amplifies the atmospheric serenity. The skeletal silhouettes of winter trees, sharp against the moonlit gradient, reveal his deep study of form and seasonal rhythm. This is not simply a depiction of a place, but a meditation on time’s passage: a moment when the sky is low, the land breathes lightly, and the world waits beneath a veil of frost.

Connoisseur's Note

Published in 1931 by Doi Teiichi, this work is among the most haunting and compositionally refined of Hasui’s prints issued outside the Watanabe workshop. The collaboration with Doi brought a quieter mood to Hasui’s oeuvre, often emphasizing solitude and subtle illumination, as exemplified here. The refined balance between line and gradation, especially the interplay of dark trees and luminous sky, reflects Hasui’s mastery of Shin-Hanga ideals—uniting traditional technique with a modern, emotive gaze.

Village lights in the distance offer faint points of gold—subtle anchors in the encroaching blue. Their presence, nearly imperceptible, heightens the contrast between human perception and nature’s vastness. Hasui’s Winter Moon over Toyama Plain is less an image than a moment of breath—one in which stillness takes on sound, and the moon becomes both guardian and witness to the quiet interiority of winter.