Mt. Choukai on a Fine Day

Mt. Chokai (Choukai) is a 2,236-meter stratovolcano on the border of Akita and Yamagata prefectures, often called Dewa Fuji for its symmetrical conical profile. This print depicts the mountain under clear weather — likely showing snow lingering on the summit cone with foreground rice paddies, farmhouses, or fields stretching toward the base. The compositional device of a great mountain rising behind cultivated lowland is rooted in centuries of Japanese landscape art, from Hokusai's Fugaku Sanjurokkei onward, and Ohtsu inherits this lineage while filtering it through his characteristic warm, intimate sensibility. Mokuhanga renders such a subject through tightly registered color blocks: the sky printed with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation from pale blue to white near the horizon, the mountain's snow given by the natural paper surface, and the foreground rendered in the saturated greens or autumn ochres of working farmland. Mt. Chokai dominates the visual identity of its surrounding region, and Ohtsu's treatment ties the named peak to the agricultural communities that live in its sightline — consistent with his abiding theme of rural Japan and the land that shapes it.