Mt Tateshina

Mt Tateshina (Tateshina-yama) is a stratovolcano in Nagano Prefecture, rising over the highland plateaus of central Honshu. The print likely depicts the mountain's profile from the surrounding plain or foothills, possibly with foreground vegetation or settlement framing the peak. As a meisho-e of a specific named summit, it follows the long lineage of Japanese mountain imagery, but Oda's treatment would have brought his sosaku-hanga sensibility — the artist personally cutting, printing, and signing the block — to bear on what was traditionally a more workshop-oriented genre. Bokashi gradients across the sky and snowfields are typical in such landscapes, achieved by wiping pigment unevenly across the block before pressing with the baren. The image reflects Oda's sustained interest in Japanese topography, an interest he developed alongside his ukiyo-e scholarship; he documented regional sites across his career as both maker and historian, situating named peaks within the broader visual record of the country.