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by Cristina Berna (Author), Eric Thomsen (Author)
Hasui Kawase (川瀬 巴水, May 18, 1883 - November 7, 1957) was a Japanese artist that took up ukiyo-e printing as it disappeared as a commercial printing form and instead became an art for its own sake, so to say.
In Hokusai and Hiroshige s time, first half of the 1800s, ukiyo-e prints were cheap - around the price of a bowl of soup -and filled the market which would later develop in postcards and magazines.
Hasui designed traditional prints in a western style, mostly landscapes, often with special lighting effects like evening og night and special weather conditions- he was fond of showing temples and shrines in snow.
He worked closely with a single publisher - Shōzaburō Watanabe - throughout his life. The Great Kantō earthquake in 1923 destroyed Watanabe's workshop, including the finished woodblocks for the yet-undistributed prints and Hasui's sketchbooks. He lost 188 sketchbooks in which he had drawn landscapes and other subjects.
In 1956, he was named a Japanese Living National Treasure. The government Committee for the Preservation of Intangible Cultural Treasures had intended to honor traditional printmaking via awards to Hasui and Ito Shinsui in 1953.
