the last few years of the Meiji period and early Taishō period. During the forty years of his artistic career, Hasui worked closely with Shōzaburō Watanabe, publisher and advocate of the shin-hanga movement. His works became widely known in the West through American connoisseur Robert O. Muller (1911–2003). 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. Because the artists' work necessitated collaboration between designer, engraver, and printer, objections were raised over singling out individual participants for recognition. Therefore, they commissioned the artists to make new prints, the production of which was carefully documented. Hasui's biographer, Narazaki Munishige, was one of those who recorded the process. Hasui died on November 27, 1957. He had created around 620 prints over the course of his career. In 1979 Narazaki published a biography and compiled the first catalogue raisonné. An exhibition of 180 of his prints was held in Tokyo in 1982. The catalogue was entitled: "Kawase Hasui: The End of the Line For Ukiyo-e". Style Kawase worked almost exclusively on landscape and townscape prints based on sketches and watercolors he made in Tokyo and during travels around Japan. However, his prints are not merely meishō (famous places) prints that are typical of earlier ukiyo-e masters such as Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Kawase's prints feature locales that are tranquil and obscure in urbanizing Japan. In 1920 Hasui designed his first falling snow print. His snow scenes are among the most original and best of his works. He later recalled "In my earlier works there are novel expressions in carving line and forms: the artisans used to complain." He said of the relationship between designer and printer: Hasui considered himself a realist and employed his training in Western painting in his compositions. Like Hiroshige he made travel and landscape prints, though his subjects were less known locations rendered with naturalistic light, shade, and texture, without the captions and titles that were standard in prints of Hiroshige's age. Kawase left a large body of woodblock prints and watercolors: many of the watercolors are linked to the woodblock prints. He also produced oil paintings, traditional hanging scrolls and a few byōbu (folding screens). Gallery Important works Twelve Scenes of Tokyo (1919–1921) Selected Views of Japan (1922–1926) Souvenirs of Travel,