Kawase Hasui – shin-hanga, Snow at Zōjōji, and the poet of the Japanese landscape

Kawase Hasui (1883–1957) was the Japanese artist who turned the snow, twilight, and moonlight of 1920s Japan into some of the 20th century’s most beloved woodblock prints – and today, into equally popular art for posters and framed prints in Swedish homes. He was the leading landscape artist of shin-hanga, “new prints,” a movement that renewed the classical Japanese woodblock print after the time of Hokusai and Hiroshige. His best-known print, Snow at Zōjōji Temple in Shiba from 1925, became his best-selling print, and in 1956 the Japanese government designated him a Living National Treasure. During a close collaboration lasting nearly forty years with publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō, he created hundreds of subjects: temple gates in snow, canals in the rain, fishing villages at dawn, and still lakes beneath a full moon.

This page is intended to be one of the most comprehensive Swedish resources on Hasui. We follow his life from his beginnings as the son of a craft-working family in Tokyo to becoming one of Japan’s most collected printmakers, explain how a shin-hanga print was actually created through collaboration between artist, carver, and printer, review his most important works, and show where you can see them – including at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm. We also connect Hasui to his predecessors in Japanese art and ukiyo-e and to contemporaries such as Ohara Koson. Finally, you’ll find practical advice on how his serene subjects work as posters in your own home.

Contents
↓ Who was Kawase Hasui?
↓ From Shiba to Hiraizumi – a biography
↓ Kawase Hasui’s most important works
↓ Technique and style – how a shin-hanga print was made
↓ Hasui, Sweden, and the Nordic eye
↓ Legacy, collectors, and exhibitions
↓ Hasui at home – interior design guide
↓ Timeline of Hasui’s life
↓ Related artists and movements
↓ Frequently asked questions about Kawase Hasui

Who was Kawase Hasui?

Quick facts: Kawase Hasui (川瀬巴水), born Kawase Bunjirō, was born on May 18, 1883, in Shiba, in what is now Minato, Tokyo, and died on November 7, 1957, in Tokyo, aged 74. His teacher Kaburagi Kiyokata gave him the artist name Hasui. His first three prints were published by Watanabe Shōzaburō in August 1918. He lost 188 sketchbooks in the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Snow at Zōjōji (1925), from the series Twenty Views of Tokyo, became his best-selling print, followed by The Moon at Magome (1930). In 1956, he was designated a Living National Treasure. His final work, Konjikidō in Snow, Hiraizumi, came out in 1957. Compilations list between around 600 and nearly 1,000 woodblock prints.

Kawase Hasui was a Japanese visual artist and printmaker based in Tokyo who specialized in landscapes: fūkei-ga. He belonged to the shin-hanga movement, which the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962) developed from the mid-1910s onward. The idea was to revive the division of labor of the old ukiyo-e tradition—a designer who draws, a carver who cuts the woodblocks, and a printer who transfers the color to paper—but to give it a modern perspective. Where Hiroshige had depicted travelers along the highways in the 1830s, Hasui painted a Japan where power lines, steamboats, and gas lamps were beginning to appear, but where temples, villages, and the seasons still defined the landscape.

What sets Hasui apart from many predecessors is the mood. His prints often lack the narrative quality and liveliness of ukiyo-e. Instead, we see a lone figure with an umbrella in falling snow, a boat gliding by in the evening light, or temple steps in the rain. Light is the protagonist: the blue hour, the pink haze of dawn, the yellow glow of a streetlamp against the snow. That is why he is often called “the poet of travel”—he journeyed throughout Japan, sketched on location, and turned his subjects into memories of a country changing rapidly.

From Shiba to Hiraizumi – a biography

Childhood and a detour through Western-style painting

Hasui grew up in the Shiba district of Tokyo, where his family ran a business making braided cords and ribbons. He showed an early talent for drawing, but was expected to take over the family business. Only in adulthood, after the business was closed, could he devote himself to art. He approached the acclaimed painter Kaburagi Kiyokata, who at first considered him too old and advised him to study Western-style painting, yōga. Hasui therefore studied for two years with Okada Saburōsuke, one of Japan’s leading oil painters, before Kiyokata finally accepted him as a student around 1910, when Hasui was 27. Kiyokata gave him the name Hasui.

The detour through Western-style painting proved decisive. Hasui learned perspective, the treatment of light, and atmosphere in ways that would shape his woodblock prints. He later combined the clear outlines and flat fields of color of the Japanese tradition with an almost Impressionist interest in weather, time of day, and reflections on water.

Meeting Watanabe in 1918

The turning point came in 1918, when Hasui saw his colleague Itō Shinsui’s series Eight Views of Ōmi (Lake Biwa), published by Watanabe. He was so moved that he sought out the publisher himself. Watanabe published three experimental prints in August of that year, followed as early as 1919 by the series Twelve Scenes of Tokyo and Eight Views of Southeastern Japan, as well as the first collection of Tabi miyage—“Travel Souvenirs”—with 16 prints. The second collection appeared in 1921. His collaboration with Watanabe would last nearly forty years, although Hasui also worked with other publishers at times.

The 1923 earthquake and the postwar years

On September 1, 1923, Tokyo was struck by the Great Kantō Earthquake and the fires that followed. Watanabe's workshop was destroyed, along with the finished woodblocks and unsold prints. Hasui lost his home and 188 sketchbooks - effectively an entire working archive. The disaster nevertheless marked the beginning of his most productive period. He set off on long journeys throughout Japan, and the third collection, Travel Memories, began to appear in 1924. Between 1925 and 1930, he created the series Twenty Views of Tokyo, depicting the city as it was being rebuilt.

War, postwar years, and national treasure

During the 1930s, Hasui's prints reached an international audience. The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, which today has works by him in its collection, featured shin-hanga in major exhibitions in 1930 and 1936. World War II, however, dealt a severe blow to Japan's woodblock print industry; materials and buyers disappeared. After the war, American soldiers and collectors became an important market, and Hasui continued working into his final year. In 1956, he was designated a Living National Treasure, and around the same time, the Japanese cultural authorities documented his working process. His final work, Konjikidō in Snow, Hiraizumi, depicts the golden hall at Chūson-ji in northern Japan and was completed in 1957, the year he died.

Kawase Hasui's most important works

Hasui's output is extensive and ranges from small postcard formats to large ōban sheets measuring around 39 × 26 centimeters. A few works, however, have achieved a special status among both collectors and museum collections. Here are the scenes that recur most often in the literature and on the auction market.

Snow at Zōjōji Temple in Shiba (1925)

The best-known print from Twenty Views of Tokyo shows the imposing red Sangedatsumon Gate at Zōjōji in Shiba - built around 1622 - in a heavy snowfall. A woman in a kimono walks by with an umbrella, and the snowflakes are printed as tiny white spots across the entire sheet. The scene was just a stone's throw from Hasui's childhood neighborhood. It became his best-selling print and is held, among other places, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Its value is evident on the auction market: at Sotheby's Arts d’Asie auction in Paris in June 2026, an early 1925 impression had an estimate of €10,000-15,000. In 1953, a special commissioned version of the scene was printed in 42 print runs.

The Moon at Magome (1930)

Hasui’s second best-selling print shows three tall pine trees silhouetted against a pale, round full moon over the fields of Magome, then on the outskirts of Tokyo. The print is a textbook example of his nighttime scenes: no people are visible, just trees, a few rooftops, and a sky that transitions from deep blue to almost white. It is part of Twenty Views of Tokyo and shows how Hasui could transform a rather ordinary suburban scene into something almost spiritual.

Twenty Views of Tokyo (1925–1930)

The series Tōkyō nijū-kei is Hasui’s great portrait of the capital after the earthquake. Among the prints are Snow at Tsukishima (1930), Shinobazu Pond in the Rain (1929), Morning at Nijūbashi Bridge (1930), and Snow at Mukōjima (1931). Together, they show a Tokyo of bridges, canals, and temples, seen in all kinds of weather. Published over five years, the series became one of the most successful in the history of shin-hanga.

Travel Souvenirs – Tabi miyage (1919–1929)

The three collections Tabi miyage – published beginning in 1919, 1921, and 1924 – are the result of Hasui’s travels from Hokkaidō in the north to Kyūshū in the south. They include subjects such as Dawn at Beppu (1928), Starry Night at Miyajima (1928), and the many coastal scenes from Chiba and Izu. The series show how Hasui worked: he traveled, sketching directly in the landscape with brush and color, then let Watanabe’s workshop translate the sketches into woodblock prints.

Konjikidō in Snow, Hiraizumi (1957)

Hasui’s final print depicts the gilded Konjikidō Hall at Chūson-ji Temple in Hiraizumi, built in 1124, in a winter landscape where a monk climbs the steps beneath snow-laden trees. The print became both a farewell and a summary of his entire body of work: snow, a temple, a lone figure, and a silence you can almost hear.

"Hasui did not paint Japan as it was about to become, but as it was disappearing – in snow, in rain and in moonlight." – Bozetto’s editorial team on Kawase Hasui

Technique and style – how a shin-hanga print was made

A Hasui woodblock print is never the work of just one person. Shin-hanga followed the same division of labor as ukiyo-e from the Edo period, but publisher Watanabe demanded greater artistic control. Hasui took part in proofing and could request changes to the colors and gradation before approving the edition.

From sketch to woodblock

The process began with Hasui’s sketches, often made on location. Based on them, he drew a clean line drawing that was pasted upside down onto a block of cherry wood. The carver cut out the contours, and, using proof prints from the key block, separate color blocks were carved – one for each color or tonal area. An unusually complex print could require dozens of printing stages; the commissioned version of Snow at Zōjōji from 1953 required 42. The printer applied water-based pigment to the block, placed damp Japanese paper, washi, on top, and rubbed the image into it with a hand tool, a baren.

Bokashi, the blue of night and the white of snow

Hasui’s signature lies in the soft transitions, bokashi, created when the printer wipes and dampens the block so the color thins into a smooth gradient. This gives his skies their glow. The night scenes are built up from layers of indigo and Prussian blue, while the snow is often created by letting the paper itself remain white - snowflakes may be left as unprinted areas or printed with a separate block. The paper’s texture and impressions without ink, karazuri, were also used to give texture to water and snow.

Western light in Japanese form

Thanks to his yōga training, Hasui used central perspective, shadows, and light sources in a way Hiroshige never did. Streetlamps, illuminated windows, and reflections in puddles give his images an almost cinematic realism. At the same time, he retained the spareness of the Japanese tradition: few figures, large empty spaces, and clear composition. It is precisely this blend that leads his prints to be described as a meeting of ukiyo-e and Impressionism.

Hasui, Sweden, and the Nordic eye

Japanese woodblock prints have a long history in Sweden. During Japonism in the 1880s and 1890s, artists such as Carl Larsson collected Japanese prints, and their flat fields of color and clear outlines left their mark on Swedish art and illustration. Hasui belongs to a later generation, but his subjects find a similar receptiveness in Sweden: the long winters, snow, and blue twilight are as familiar here as in northern Japan.

The Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, part of the National Museums of World Culture, has Hasui woodblock prints in its collection, including a view of Shiba Park in the snow. The museum has one of the largest collections of East Asian art in the Nordic countries and is one of the best places in Sweden to see Japanese prints. Swedish interest in Japanese aesthetics is also evident today: in 2026, the Nationalmuseum is showing an exhibition about ceramicists Wilhelm Kåge and Shōji Hamada, which we wrote about in our article on Kåge, Hamada, and the japandi trend.

There is also a clear affinity between Hasui’s night scenes and Swedish art around the turn of the 20th century. Eugène Jansson painted Stockholm nights in deep blue in the 1890s, and Nordic mood painting sought the same quiet, melancholic light that Hasui found in Tokyo’s canals thirty years later. This explains why his prints often fit so naturally into a Scandinavian home.

Heritage, collectors, and exhibitions

Hasui’s significance has steadily grown since his death. During the 20th century, American collector Robert O. Muller helped make him known in the West, and Muller’s extensive collection of Japanese prints is now held at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington. Works by Hasui can also be found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Edo-Tokyo Museum.

Interest remains strong today. Japanmuseum SieboldHuis in Leiden hosted the exhibition Kawase Hasui. The Imagination of Japan from December 19, 2025, to March 15, 2026. In the United States, the Vero Beach Museum of Art in Florida opens the exhibition Hokusai, Hiroshige, Hasui: Japanese Landscapes in Print in November 2026, featuring works from MFA Boston, and it runs until February 7, 2027. Several Hasui exhibitions were held in Japan during 2025, including one at the Takasaki Tower Museum of Art.

Hasui also influenced how the Japanese landscape is seen in popular culture. His tranquil images of rain, snow, and twilight live on in Japanese film, animation, and contemporary Japandi aesthetics, where simplicity and natural materials take center stage. If you’d like to read more about how Japanese prints are used as wall art, we’ve written about Ohara Koson and Hasui Kawase as wall art.

Hasui in the home – an interior design guide

Hasui’s prints are made to be viewed up close. The original prints were rarely larger than A3, and the motifs are built around details: snowflakes, a lantern, an umbrella. This makes them well suited to rooms where you pause for a moment – the hallway, bedroom, reading nook. Bozetto carries around fifty of his motifs as posters, from Snow at Zōjōji and Moon at Magome to Spring Evening at Inokashira Park and Morning at Cape Inubō. You can find them among our artworks by famous artists and in the collection Japandi – posters in Japanese and Scandinavian design.

Choose motifs to suit the season and the light

One of the most rewarding ways to enjoy Hasui is to let his motifs follow the seasons. His work spans all four seasons: wisteria at Kameido in spring, coastal villages in summer sunshine, maple leaves in Oirase in autumn, and temples in the snow in winter. With a framing system that lets you switch posters with the seasons, the same wall can feel new four times a year. The snowy scenes work especially well in Swedish homes from November to February, when they echo the landscape outside the window, while the blue nighttime scenes bring a sense of calm to a bedroom all year round.

Frames, mounts, and sizes

Since the originals have a distinct margin and warm, slightly creamy-white paper, Hasui works beautifully in light oak or black-stained ash frames. A white or off-white mount enhances the feel of a museum print and gives the image room to breathe. Sizes such as 30 × 40 and 50 × 70 centimeters are close to the proportions of the originals. Read our guide on how to choose the right frame for the right poster before you decide.

Pairing with Nordic and Japanese art

Hasui pairs beautifully with other Japanese masters such as Hokusai and Hiroshige, as well as with calm, pared-back Nordic art. A gallery wall with three Hasui prints in matching frame colors, complemented by a minimalist poster or a scene from our nature prints, creates a cohesive look. Our complete guide to gallery walls, as well as the Japandi style principles of simplicity and natural materials, offer more ideas. If you like The Great Wave, we also have a collection of Hokusai posters and prints.

Tip: Hang a Hasui snow scene, such as Snow at Zōjōji or Snow at Hie Shrine, in the hallway during winter, and switch to a spring scene such as Wisteria at Kameido in March. Position the center at about 145–150 centimeters above the floor, and choose warm lighting: Hasui’s yellow lantern glow and blue twilight look best in soft evening light rather than cold, bright overhead light.

Timeline of Hasui’s life

1883 – Kawase Bunjirō is born on May 18 in Shiba, Tokyo.

around 1908 – Studies Western-style painting (yōga) for two years under Okada Saburōsuke.

1910 – Is accepted as a student by Kaburagi Kiyokata and given the name Hasui.

1918 – Sees Itō Shinsui’s prints of Lake Biwa and begins working with Watanabe Shōzaburō; the first three prints are released in August.

1919 – The first collection of Tabi miyage (16 prints) and Twelve Scenes of Tokyo are published.

1921 – The second collection of Tabi miyage is published.

1923 – The Great Kantō earthquake on September 1 destroys Watanabe’s workshop and 188 of Hasui’s sketchbooks.

1924 – The third collection, Tabi miyage, is begun after long journeys.

1925 – Snow at Zōjōji launches the series Twenty Views of Tokyo (1925–1930).

1930 – Moon at Magome; shin-hanga exhibited at the Toledo Museum of Art in the United States.

1953 – Special edition of Snow at Zōjōji printed in 42 impressions.

1956 – Designated a Living National Treasure.

1957 – Final work Konjikidō in Snow, Hiraizumi; Hasui dies in Tokyo on November 7.

2025–2026 – The exhibition Kawase Hasui. The Imagination of Japan at Japanmuseum SieboldHuis in Leiden.

Related artists and movements

Hasui is at the heart of a long Japanese visual tradition. If you want to understand where he came from, our page on Japanese art and ukiyo-e is a good starting point, as are the profiles of Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, whose landscape series Hasui deliberately renewed. His closest contemporary in shin-hanga, the bird painter Ohara Koson, also worked for Watanabe.

From another angle, you can follow how Japanese prints influenced the West through Japonism and Impressionism, and how the blue light of night was depicted in Stockholm by Eugène Jansson. For an overview of the genre, see our page on landscape painting and the comprehensive guide to art history. All our fact pages about artists and art movements are collected in Bozetto's knowledge base. The English Wikipedia article about Hasui Kawase has a longer list of museums with his works.

Frequently asked questions about Kawase Hasui

Would you like to bring Hasui’s serene winter light and twilight blues into your own home? Discover his works among Bozetto’s artworks by famous artists and in our Japandi collection – printed on quality paper and ready to frame.