Tanabata Festival in Hida

This print depicts the Tanabata festival as observed in the Hida region of Gifu Prefecture, where Mori was born in 1909. Traditional Hida Tanabata, celebrated in early August following the lunar calendar, features tall bamboo poles hung with tanzaku (paper strips bearing wishes) and colorful streamers, often arranged along the preserved Edo-period streets of Takayama. As a sosaku-hanga practitioner trained under Onchi Koshiro, Mori carved and printed his own blocks, employing bokashi gradation to suggest evening atmosphere or summer light filtering through the decorations. The composition would balance the vertical thrust of bamboo against the horizontal lines of Hida's wooden townhouses. This print belongs to Mori's lifelong project of documenting matsuri and regional folk customs — the same impulse that produced his collaboration with Kawanishi Hide on Nihon Minzoku Zufu in 1946. By choosing his native region, Mori records both an inherited tradition and a place-specific variation absent from more urbanized versions of the festival.