
Iizuka landscape
- Medium:
- Mokuhanga (Japanese woodblock)
- Image courtesy of
- Saru Gallery
Description
Likely a companion or variant view of the same Kyushu town treated in View of Iizuka, this print extends Fujimori's documentation of regional landscape rather than the canonical sites of [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition. Where the older convention emphasized famous landmarks, [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) practitioners frequently turned to ordinary locales given personal significance through direct observation. The print would have been worked block-by-block by Fujimori himself, with each color requiring its own carved board and a separate impression pulled with the [baren](/glossary/baren) onto washi. Subtle differences in baren pressure and pigment loading—the small inconsistencies that workshop production sought to eliminate—are valued in self-printed work as evidence of the artist's hand. The choice of an industrial provincial town rather than the Edo/Tokyo cityscape or a celebrated mountain illustrates the geographic and thematic breadth Fujimori brought to his landscape practice across the interwar decades, when sosaku-hanga consolidated its identity as a movement distinct from both traditional [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e) and contemporary [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga).

