About the artist
Kokan Bannai was a painter who designed a few woodblock prints in the shin hanga, or “new print” style. Working with the eminent shin hanga publisher Shozaburo Watanabe in the 1930s, Kokan completed several prints for the series Fifty-three Modern Views of the Tokaido. Though the series was proposed in full, only three designs were released: “Nihonbashi in Snow,” “Atsuta Old Castle at Dawn,” and “Lake Ashinoko, Hakone.”