Hachirogata Lagoon, Akita

In the foreground of the vertical canvas, the thick trunk of a large tree rises, its branches covering the top of the picture. At the right stands what looks like a plank-built shrine building, and leafy grass spreads on the ground. Beyond the left side of the tree can be seen a blue, sunken lake surface and a low range of distant mountains, and a few stars shine in the sky. The whole is gathered in deep blue and green, expressing the stillness of night.

Dappled shadows of leaves fall across the tree trunk and the plank walls of the building. It is a way of conveying that bright moonlight is shining, not through the light itself but through shadows. In the margin at the lower left are printed the title "Akita Hachirogata" and the date "made in Showa 2," and at the lower right are Hasui's signature and seal.

Hasui worked with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo, turning landscapes sketched on his travels into woodblock prints. "Souvenirs of Travel" is a representative series of his, and the third collection also includes several Akita scenes, such as Lake Tazawa, the Oga Peninsula, and Tsuchizaki. The National Diet Library owns "Kawase Hasui Prints" containing this work and makes it available on the internet.

The Hachirogata depicted was then the second-largest lake in Japan. Because most of it became land through reclamation in the Showa era, this picture is also a work that conveys the lakeside as it was before reclamation.