Oonuma Koen kara Koma ga take

Oonuma Koen kara Komagatake (Mt. Komagatake from Onuma Park), an undated woodblock by Okuyama Gihachiro (1907-1981), engages the celebrated southern Hokkaido viewing site of Onuma Quasi-National Park, where the islet-studded lake offers a classic foreground for the active volcanic peak of Komagatake. The locale is one of the most reproduced scenic compositions in northern Japan, and Okuyama, a self-taught printmaker from Akita who became one of the few Tohoku-region figures in the predominantly Tokyo-and-Kyoto [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) (creative print) scene, brings to it the bold-color discipline he had developed for his native winter and festival subjects. The composition is structured rather than panoramic: a weighted band of cool color carries the lake across the middle of the sheet, with the conical mass of Komagatake registered as a firmly bounded color plane rising behind it, and the foreground organized through saturated greens or earth tones reading as shore vegetation and islets. The dramatic perspective characteristic of his work establishes a strong, almost diagrammatic relation between water, mountain, and sky. As a thoroughgoing participant in the sosaku-hanga movement, Okuyama designed, carved, and printed each impression himself, in keeping with the movement's foundational principle that each impression be a personally authored act. The Japanese Art Open Database, through [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).org, preserves this impression as part of a broader record of his catalogue (https://ukiyo-e.org/image/jaodb/Gihachiro_Okuyama-No_Series-Oonuma_Koen_kara_Koma_ga_take-00035104-061016-F06). For students of Okuyama Gihachiro, the Onuma-Komagatake print is useful for the way it extends his attention from Tohoku across the Tsugaru Strait into Hokkaido, demonstrating how comfortably his bold-color, dramatic-perspective vocabulary could absorb the volcanic landscapes of the far north.