Autumn Maple Leaves at Takao, from the album Eight Views of Kyoto (Kyôto hakkei)
by Insho Domoto
by Insho Domoto
This meisho-e from Domoto's Kyôto hakkei album depicts Takao, the mountainous district northwest of Kyoto celebrated for its autumn foliage along the Kiyotaki River. The area, encompassing the temple precincts of Jingo-ji and Kozan-ji, turns vivid crimson and amber each November, and Domoto renders the overlapping maple canopy with the layered color printing characteristic of early twentieth-century landscape woodblock work. Likely printed in oban format on absorbent washi, the composition probably employs bokashi gradations to convey atmospheric depth in the wooded valley. As a nihonga painter trained in the Kyoto tradition, Domoto brings a sensitivity to tonal harmony that distinguishes these landscape prints from purely commercial shin-hanga production. The album as a whole surveys canonical Kyoto scenery through a distinctly modernist sensibility, and the Takao subject allows full expression of the season's color range within a tightly controlled printmaking vocabulary.
Woodblock print
Woodblock print
Woodblock print
early Shôwa period (1926–1989), 1926/35
Silk, plain weave; stenciled and resist dyed (yûzenzome: ita-age, suri yûzenzome, otoshizome and shigokizome)
Wakasa Kugushiko
1920
Color woodblock print; oban
1934
Color woodblock print; oban
n.d.
Woodblock print; ishizuri-e, section of harimaze sheet
Boshu Taikai
1925
Color woodblock print; oban
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Autumn Maple Leaves at Takao, from the album Eight Views of Kyoto (Kyôto hakkei) was created by Insho Domoto (堂本印象).
Autumn Maple Leaves at Takao, from the album Eight Views of Kyoto (Kyôto hakkei) depicts landscapes, trees, and autumn foliage, set at Kyoto.