A woodblock print artist active from the Taisho to Showa periods, he is known as the person who, together with Yoshida Hiroshi and others, established a new style of ukiyo-e prints, the shinbanga, to revive the declining ukiyo-e prints in Japan. He is known as a “traveling poet,” “traveling printmaker,” and “Hiroshige of the Showa period. He was a pioneer of modern landscape prints, and produced many prints based on pictures he sketched during his travels around Japan, expressing beautiful Japanese landscapes in a lyrical manner.
At a time when cities and landscapes were undergoing rapid transformation due to rapid modernization, he depicted landscapes he found on his travels throughout his life, including the seasons, weather, and even the change of time.
Although it is well known that the Japanese culture of Zen influenced Steve Jobs’ aesthetic sense, he was actually greatly influenced by the shinhanga prints he saw as a child, especially Hasui, before he was exposed to Zen.