Morning on Mt.Tsurugi

Mount Tsurugi — the jagged, technically demanding peak in the Tateyama Range of the Northern Alps — stands as one of the most formidable summits in Japan, and Yoshida depicted its morning face in this 1926 print with the awe appropriate to such terrain. The cold clarity of early light on rock and snow was a challenge well suited to his jizuri technique, which allowed him to control the delicate gradations of dawn illumination without the color drift that came from working with commercial printers. The mountain's near-vertical ridgelines and exposed rock faces convey a wildness quite different from the rounded, accessible beauty of Fuji that dominated the shin-hanga canon.