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 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 collaboration or in the more direct hand of sosaku-hanga self-printing, the image rests on the contrast between still water and the textured slope rising behind it.