Yoshihide Fukumoto

Yoshihide Fukumoto (born 1954, Hyogo Prefecture) is a Japanese silkscreen printmaker with a sustained practice currently based in Nagano Prefecture. His selection in the 68th CWAJ Print Show in 2025 with 'Ablaze with autumn leaves, Mt. Jonen is now crowned with snow,' a 49 × 64 cm silkscreen, places him within the established cohort of senior Japanese silkscreen artists working in the long tradition of Japanese mountain landscape print.

Fukumoto trained at Osaka University of Arts, one of the principal Kansai-region private art universities, and studied under Kimura Kousuke. The Osaka University of Arts printmaking program is one of the established private-sector counterparts to the public-university Kyoto City University of Arts, and its lineage includes several established silkscreen specialists. Direct teaching-line affiliation with Kimura Kousuke situates Fukumoto within a documented Kansai-region silkscreen pedagogical tradition.

Fukumoto's relocation from Hyogo Prefecture to Nagano Prefecture is consistent with his choice of subject matter. The featured print depicts Mount Jonen (常念岳), a 2,857-metre peak in the Northern Japanese Alps in Nagano Prefecture, one of the most photographed and depicted mountains in central Japan. The title — 'Ablaze with autumn leaves, Mt. Jonen is now crowned with snow' — evokes the late-autumn moment when the lower slopes are still in full koyo (autumn-leaf) color while the summit has received its first snowfall, the meteorological signature of high-altitude central Japan in late October and early November.

Fukumoto's silkscreen technique is one of the principal contemporary Japanese print media, capable of producing the dense, saturated, and precisely registered color planes characteristic of his mountain landscapes. The 49 × 64 cm sheet size is a moderate horizontal silkscreen, allowing for a panoramic landscape composition. Silkscreen as a Japanese contemporary print medium has been particularly well suited to mountain landscape subjects, where the technique's flat-color graphic register reads as a deliberate stylization of the elevational layering of forested slopes, exposed rock, and snow.

The Mount Jonen subject and the autumn-with-first-snow seasonal moment situate Fukumoto's work within a long tradition of Japanese mountain prints, running from the Hokusai and Hiroshige Mt. Fuji series through the Yoshida Hiroshi and Kawase Hasui shin-hanga mountain depictions to the contemporary print celebration of Japanese mountain heritage. The CWAJ catalog selected 'Ablaze with autumn leaves, Mt. Jonen is now crowned with snow' for the 2025 online gallery presentation.

Further biographical detail beyond the CWAJ Print Show entry — Fukumoto's broader exhibition history, gallery representation, museum holdings, and earlier work — is not currently surfaced through the public-facing English-language channels. Nagano-area exhibition records and the Osaka University of Arts alumni network would be the principal next-step research targets for extending this bio.