Mt. Aso

Mount Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture — the world's largest active volcanic caldera, its five volcanic peaks surrounding an inhabited caldera floor — provided Hagiwara with a subject uniquely combining natural grandeur and geological extremity. The mountain's active craters, which periodically fill with bright blue acid lakes and emit sulfurous steam, gave the landscape a quality of barely contained geological violence. Hagiwara's treatment uses his carved surfaces to render the mountain's combination of serene pastoral exterior and the volcanic energy visible in its crater zones.