Taketsuru Masataka, founder of Nikka Whiskey

A commemorative portrait of Masataka Taketsuru (1894–1979), the chemist who apprenticed at Scottish distilleries between 1918 and 1920 and returned to Japan to establish the Yoichi distillery in Hokkaido and the Nikka Whisky company in 1934. Okuyama renders Taketsuru in middle age, the head modeled with registered key-block lines and flat color planes that describe facial structure without resorting to halftone shading. Portraiture occupied a marginal position in [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga), which oriented itself principally toward landscape and still life, but Okuyama undertook occasional commemorative commissions of this kind across his career, and the print probably connects to a Nikka corporate publication or anniversary issue. Compared with his snow-laden Tohoku scenes, the portrait shows the printmaker working within a tighter chromatic range and prioritizing graphic clarity over atmospheric effect — an approach he also used in his Western-source prints and figure subjects.