Hasui, Kawase (1883 – 1957), “Dancing Girls Enjoying Cool Breeze On River Kamo (Pre-Earthquake)”

Notes: A rare pre-earthquake design only found in the scarce 1919 first edition book, Sights of Old Capital by Aisaburo Akiyama. Included are two woodblock prints, Hiroshige's, "Arashiyama" from his Famous Places in Kyoto series, and Hasui's 1919, "Dancing Girls Enjoying Cool Breeze On River Kamo". Also several black and white photographs and a beautifully colored dedication page with Mt. Fuji. "Hasui not only studied illustration (sashi-e) with Kiyokata (from around 1913 to 1918), he also made his living as an illustrator for the department store Hakubotan and the Tokyo Art and Science News Service advertising firm (Tokyo gakugei tsushinsha). Hasui's early illustrations reveal his training in figure drawing, learned informally by copying old works, then in Kiyokata's atelier. A representative early example is the small print of two Kyoto maiko, one of three supplements in Akiyama Aisaburo's book Sights of Old Capital from 1919. The convention of the large-headed, thin-necked bijin was popular at the time. More important is Hasui's treatment of the landscape. The row of structures illuminated from within is a stock image, but the soft treatment of water and sandbank foreshadows Hasui's later work". - Water and Shadow; pg. 10-11