Recollections of Gûreme

Göreme is a town in the Cappadocia region of central Turkey, set among the volcanic tuff formations and rock-cut churches that define the area. The title's use of "Recollections" frames the print as a remembered rather than directly observed scene, suggesting it derives from travel or from photographs and study. Foreign subject matter is uncommon but not unknown in modern Japanese woodblock printing, with Onchi Kōshirō, Hiratsuka Un'ichi, and other twentieth-century printmakers occasionally turning to non-Japanese sites. Compositions of Cappadocia typically emphasize the silhouettes of the eroded "fairy chimney" cones, cave openings carved into the rock face, and the dry, sparsely vegetated terrain. Mokuhanga can capture such forms through simplified mass shapes and textured grain effects from the woodblock's surface, with restrained palettes echoing the ochre and pale-grey tonalities of the stone. Within Maeda Toshiro's body of work, this print marks a departure from Japanese landscape subjects and indicates an interest in carrying traditional woodblock technique into international subject matter.