Inume Pass in Kai Province (Kōshū Inume tōge)

Inume Pass in Kai Province, known in Japanese as Kōshū Inume tōge, is a Katsushika Hokusai print from around 1830 in the Victoria and Albert Museum and belongs to the Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. The composition shows a group of travelers winding their way through the Inume Pass in the mountains of Kai Province, modern Yamanashi, with Mount Fuji rising serenely in the distance above lower ranges of hills. Hokusai uses receding bands of color to articulate the depth of the view, layering Prussian blue mountains against pale skies and earth-toned slopes in a way that gives the composition a measured architectural rhythm. The travelers themselves are small but precise, reminding the viewer of the human effort required to cross such terrain on foot, and they give scale to the larger geography of the pass and the mountain beyond. As a ukiyo-e print designer at the height of his landscape ambition, Hokusai exemplifies how the Thirty-six Views series elevated the routine experience of travel into the central subject of Edo ukiyo-e. The Victoria and Albert Museum preserves the sheet within its substantial holdings of Hokusai material, where it sits alongside other key designs from the series. The print remains a touchstone example of how the artist used Fuji to organize the broader landscape of central Japan into a coherent and memorable image.