Kaga province, morning at the top of Mount Haku

Mount Haku (Hakusan, 白山, 'white mountain') is one of Japan's three sacred peaks, straddling Ishikawa, Gifu, and Fukui prefectures, and a long-standing destination for Shugendō pilgrimage. The title's specification of morning suggests an atmospheric study of the summit at dawn — likely employing carefully calibrated [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to render the transitional light, the volcanic crater, and the upper ridges still patched with snow. As a [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) of an alpine site, this print departs from the more frequently depicted urban or coastal subjects of the [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) school. Hakutei's training under Kuroda Seiki at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts and his European study trip equipped him to handle altitude, atmosphere, and tonal modulation in ways that reflect Western landscape painting translated into mokuhanga. As a founding member of the Nihon Sosaku Hanga Kyokai (1918), he treated such subjects with a modernist economy unlike the ornamental approach of late Edo [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e).