Mt Fuji

A second Fuji study from Sasajima, distinct from his first treatment of the subject and reflecting his practice of returning to a motif under altered carving and inking decisions. In Sasajima's Fuji prints the mountain is generally pared down to a flat silhouette achieved with broad gouges into a plank, the chisel marks left visible rather than smoothed. The print likely sets a single deep tone — [sumi](/glossary/sumi)-derived black or an iron-oxide brown — against the unprinted [washi](/glossary/washi) or a lightly inked second block, with the woodgrain reading horizontally across the sky as a subtle striation. Sasajima rarely employed the elaborate [baren](/glossary/baren) [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations of [nishiki-e](/glossary/nishiki-e) tradition; instead the mountain registers as a near-iconic shape, more architectural than atmospheric. Such repeated treatments of Fuji parallel his obsessive returns to Todai-ji, Horyu-ji, and the great temples: variation is the working method, with each impression rebuilt from a freshly resolved block rather than retouched from an earlier version.