Zao

The Zao volcanic complex straddling the border of Yamagata and Miyagi prefectures occupies a recurring place in Maeda's print output, and this composition likely presents the range as a whole rather than fixating on its better-known crater. Zao's slopes carry conifers stunted into juhyo — rime-encrusted snow monsters — across winter, while summer reveals exposed pumice and patches of alpine vegetation. As a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) designer, Maeda carved and pulled his own blocks for self-published work, allowing the chisel mark and grain of the cherrywood to remain visible in the finished impression. The northern volcanic terrain shared characteristics with Hokkaido's mountains where he was raised, and his treatment of such subjects typically favored flattened spatial arrangement and unmodulated color blocks over the tonal [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients more common in [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) landscape designs of the same period.