Details

In Lake Ashi in Rain, Ito Takashi offers a masterful evocation of transience and perseverance, set within the shifting atmosphere of Hakone's sacred landscape. The composition is dominated by rain—sheets of it, cutting diagonally across the print in delicate yet persistent lines—rendered with a technique both subtle and deeply evocative. A lone traveler and his packhorse trudge along a windswept path, their forms huddled against nature’s elemental force. Trees bend with stoic grace, their forms accentuating the invisible yet palpable gusts of wind sweeping across the terrain.

The lake itself, Ashinoko, lies beneath a veil of rain and mist, with the distant mountain range softened into abstraction by stormy clouds. This visual obscuration imbues the scene with the essence of yūgen—the mysterious and the unseen—central to classical Japanese aesthetics. It also recalls the influence of earlier masters such as Hiroshige, yet Takashi’s palette and composition are distinctly modern, merging Shin-Hanga refinement with a lyrical painterliness.

Connoisseur's Note

Ito Takashi, a student of Kaburagi Kiyokata and leading contributor to the Shin-Hanga movement, is revered for his serene yet emotionally resonant landscapes. This 1929 work exemplifies his gift for capturing mood through weather, and it is arguably one of his finest achievements in conveying the melancholy beauty of rain—a recurring motif in Japanese art symbolizing both hardship and spiritual cleansing. The choice of Lake Ashi, a site associated with both Shinto pilgrimage and natural reverence, underscores the spiritual undercurrents in the scene.

Published by Watanabe Shōzaburō, the foremost advocate for the Shin-Hanga movement, this print bears all the hallmarks of early editions: crisp detail, delicate bokashi shading in the sky and lake, and the use of fine, hand-carved linework that animates each raindrop. The balance of motion and stillness, of form and dissolution, reflects Takashi’s sensitivity to mono no aware—the pathos of things. This is not simply a landscape, but a meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and the enduring poetry of the natural world.

This impression bares the Watanabe B-type seal, indicating this print is a rare first state of the design.