Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints

Kawase Hasui (1883 1957) was one of the leading advocates of the shin hanga (new prints) movement in Japan. Water and Shadow: Kawase Hasui and Japanese Landscape Prints is the first publication devoted to prints from Hasui s earliest and most creative period of woodblock print design, which lasted from 1918 through the Great Earthquake of 1923, when many of his early prints were destroyed. These works illustrate Japan s landscape, the beauty of urban spaces, and modern life in Japan. Through these tranquil, dreamlike works, the publication explores the themes of nostalgia and longing the search for individual and national identity in Japan during the early Taish period (1912 1926), an era of rapid social and cultural change during Japan s modernization.