Whispers of Rain, Silence of Snow. Kawase Hasui

From 29 November 2026 to 28 February 2027 the Manggha Museum’s main building will show 103 woodblock prints by Kawase Hasui, a master of the Japanese landscape in the first half of the 20th century. According to the museum, this will be the artist’s first exhibition in Poland, and every work will come from the Galerie Nouvelle collection in Kashiwa.

The Manggha Museum on the exhibition (our translation; the museum publishes no English text):

Called the poet of nostalgia and nature, he was an artist forever on the road. He crossed the country notebook in hand, recording places that were vanishing for good under the pressure of rapid modernisation and industrialisation. His body of work is an intimate record of a deep longing for the old, harmonious Japan.

At the exhibition, prepared in cooperation with Galerie Nouvelle, visitors will be able to admire the very essence of his style. It is made up of landscapes drenched in streaming rain, snow-covered village temples, majestic castles in the moonlight and seaside villages sinking into the evening dusk. Like no one else, Hasui could capture the melancholy of a fleeting moment. A characteristic feature of his work is the near-total renunciation of dynamic human scenes in favour of an all-pervading, monumental nature. If a person appears in his woodblock prints, it is usually as a lone wanderer hidden under a traditional umbrella, completely merged with the world around him.

What to expect

This will be a show of one artist and one technique: 103 colour woodblock prints from the shin-hanga movement, the “new prints”, all from the Japanese collection of Galerie Nouvelle in Kashiwa. The museum says it prepared the show together with the gallery; the curators are Joanna Haba and Noboru Suzuki. The exhibition will be in the main building on ul. Konopnickiej, not in the Europe - Far East Gallery annex.

The museum dedicates the exhibition to the artist’s daughter, Fumiko Hasui. Expect above all landscape of the Taishō and Shōwa periods, in which people rarely take the leading part. The exhibition page also mentions Hasui’s publisher, Shōzaburō Watanabe, and the teamwork behind every print. It does not, however, give a list of works, the number of rooms, or whether woodblocks or proof impressions will be shown.

The title suits the winter dates. Snow, rain and moonlight are the motifs the museum puts at the centre, and the show will run through December, January and February. The exhibition page makes no mention of a catalogue or an accompanying publication.

Context

Hasui was born Bunjirō Kawase in Tokyo in 1883. According to Wikipedia, his artist’s name was given to him by Kiyokata Kaburagi, with whom he studied Japanese-style painting; before that he had spent two years studying Western-style painting. His first woodblock prints were published by Shōzaburō Watanabe in 1918.

The Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 destroyed the publisher’s workshop, the carved blocks and 188 of the artist’s sketchbooks. In 1956 Hasui was named a Living National Treasure in recognition of his contribution to Japanese culture.

Shin-hanga is the name Watanabe coined in 1915 for prints that joined the old ukiyo-e technique with a Western feeling for light and mood. Every print was a team effort: the artist designed it, a craftsman carved the blocks, a printer pulled the impressions and the publisher financed the whole. The rival sōsaku-hanga movement championed the artist who draws, carves and prints alone. According to Wikipedia, shin-hanga sold mainly in the West, especially in the United States, while demand in Japan was small.

Hasui designed his first print of falling snow in 1920, and according to Wikipedia his winter scenes are counted among his most original work. You can see an example before your visit in the Art Institute of Chicago’s online collection: “Snow at Zōjō-ji Temple” , 1929. Abroad, Hasui was shown recently by the Japanmuseum SieboldHuis in Leiden, from 19 December 2025 to 15 March 2026 according to Museum.nl .

Tickets and time

There will be no separate ticket, at least as things stand today. The exhibition page gives no price of its own, and according to the museum’s price list one ticket admits you to all current exhibitions. Among its upcoming shows the museum also announces the posters of Eiko Ishioka, running until 17 January 2027, so until mid-January one ticket should cover both.

Regular admission is 30 PLN, reduced 20 PLN. Reduced tickets cover, among others, school and university students, doctoral students, over-65s, pensioners and teachers. A family ticket is 50 PLN (up to four people, at least one of them a child under 18), and a group ticket for up to 20 people is 120 PLN. Children under 7 go free, and the museum honours the Large Family Card (Karta Dużej Rodziny) and the Karta “N”.

Admission is free on Tuesdays, and according to the museum’s ticket-sales page the free day covers all temporary exhibitions. The museum opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00-18:00 (10 AM-6 PM); last entry is half an hour before closing. The museum has announced no change to winter opening hours.

The holiday season changes the schedule, though: on 24 and 31 December the museum will be open 10:00-14:00, and on 25 December it will be closed. The list on the practical information page also shows the museum closed on 1 January (a Friday), that is New Year’s Day 2027. The museum has not yet published its hours for 2027, so check that page before a visit in January or February.

Online tickets for each month go on sale in the last week of the month before. Tickets for the show’s November days will therefore go on sale at the end of October, and for December at the end of November. Guided tours must be booked at least 10 days in advance.

For 103 prints, allow 60 minutes if you are looking rather than reading, and about 90 minutes if you read the labels. Woodblock prints reward a close look: the colour gradations, the texture of the paper and the marks of the printing only show from a short distance.

The show is best for anyone who enjoys landscape, printmaking and old Japan. It also suits anyone who knows the prints of Hokusai or Hiroshige and wants to see how that tradition was taken up in the 20th century. If you are looking for contemporary Japan, design or action, this exhibition will not give it to you. The museum stands on the Vistula opposite Wawel: from the castle it is about a kilometre across the Grunwaldzki Bridge, and the nearest tram and bus stops are both called Rondo Grunwaldzkie.

See also

• Vincent van Gogh: Country Cottages Among the Trees - at the National Museum in Krakow until 31 December: an intimate Dutch landscape from 1883, the year Hasui was born. Two views of the countryside from opposite ends of the world.
• Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology - the museum profile: Arata Isozaki’s building, the Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński collection, hours and how to get there.

Tickets, opening hours, and current details are on the Manggha Museum website (Polish-language page).

Museum profile: Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology .