Akagi-onuma lake

Onuma is the larger of the two crater lakes at the summit of Mount Akagi in Gunma Prefecture, an extinct volcano whose rim encircles a caldera filled with reflective water, marsh grass, and the dark trunks of birch. The lake has been a regional meisho since the Edo period and carries strong associations with the volcanic landscapes of inland Honshu. A print of this subject would likely deploy the reflective horizontality of the water surface against the encircling slopes, using [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations to render the recession of mountain into atmospheric haze and the soft transition between water and far shore. The volcanic character of Akagi-Onuma — comparable in formation to the calderas Maeda would have known from Hokkaido — sits within the artist's broader interest in northern and mountainous topography. Whether printed in the multi-block precision of [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) collaboration or in the more direct hand of [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) self-printing, the image rests on the contrast between still water and the textured slope rising behind it.