The Back of Mount Fuji Seen from Minobu River (Minobugawa Urafuji), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)

The Back of Mount Fuji Seen from Minobu River (Minobugawa Urafuji), from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei), is Katsushika Hokusai's western-side view of the sacred peak, taken from along the Minobu River in Kai Province, near the Nichiren-shu pilgrimage center at Minobu-san Kuonji. The print, held by the Art Institute of Chicago, dates from the early 1830s and shows the mountain's less familiar profile rising above a steep river gorge, with pilgrims and travelers winding along a precipitous mountain road in the foreground. The composition exploits the dramatic verticality of the Minobu valley, balancing the human figures on slim ledges against the broad mass of the snow-streaked peak. As a fukei-ga in the mature Edo ukiyo-e idiom, the print takes a deliberate interest in pilgrimage geography: Minobu was a major destination for Nichiren devotees, and Hokusai pairs the religious pilgrimage with the geographic curiosity of seeing Fuji from behind, away from the canonical Tokaido viewpoints. The cool Prussian-blue river, scattered black-line cloud forms, and warm ochres of the rocky slopes typify the chromatic vocabulary of the Fugaku sanjurokkei. The image also evidences how Hokusai used the series to map Mount Fuji into a network of provincial roads, river valleys, and Buddhist sites, expanding the conventional iconography beyond Edo and the Tokaido. As such, it documents both the religious topography of late Edo Japan and Hokusai's commitment to representing the mountain from every meaningful angle.