Mountain after mountain

Mountain after mountain treats the receding ridgelines of central Honshū — the country of Hagiwara's childhood at the foot of Fuji — as a subject for rhythmic, near-abstract repetition. The composition almost certainly stacks successive silhouettes from foreground to far distance, each ridge printed from its own carved block in a slightly shifted tone, producing the layered translucency that defines his mature work. Where Hokusai's mountain views relied on outline and color blocks, Hagiwara's method depends on the cumulative optical effect of many overlapping impressions on heavy washi, often fifteen or more, with bokashi gradations softening the seams between ridges into atmospheric haze. The print continues a deeply rooted Japanese motif — kasanaru yama, mountains piled on mountains — within a sosaku-hanga vocabulary, and connects to Hagiwara's broader interest in geological structure first absorbed from the volcanic terrain of Yamanashi. Among his landscape works, mountain prints form a sustained thread distinct from the more strictly nonfigurative Stone Garden and Gemstone series.