Mt Fuji from Lake Suwa

Lake Suwa sits in Nagano Prefecture, offering a distant view of Mount Fuji across its waters. This print places Fuji as a small but dominant element in the far distance, with the lake's surface providing a horizontal counterweight. The composition likely employs [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradation in the sky—a graded wash achieved by wiping pigment from the block before printing—to suggest atmospheric depth between viewer and mountain. Koizumi's approach, in which he designed, carved, and printed each block himself in line with the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) ethic, gave him control over the subtle tonal transitions characteristic of his landscapes. While Mount Fuji is more closely associated with [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) topographic series like those of Hasui and Yoshida, Koizumi treated it on his own terms: simplified massing, quiet palettes, and a deliberate avoidance of theatrical weather effects. The print sits outside his celebrated One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo (Dai Tokyo Hyakkei) series of 1928–1940, instead belonging to a smaller body of provincial views in which he applied the same disciplined self-carved technique to scenes beyond the capital.