Mt. Fuji

A study of the mountain treated as the principal subject, likely shown in one of its canonical aspects — snow-capped summit against a clearing sky, or seen across a bay or pine plain. Gekko's Fuji compositions typically use a restricted palette dominated by indigo and grey, with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradations along the sky and at the base of the cone to suggest atmosphere. The figure of Fuji is built up through careful registration of separate color blocks, and the contour of the peak relies on a strong keyblock impression rather than heavy outlining. Within Gekko's work, repeated returns to Fuji place him in the long [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) lineage of Hokusai and Hiroshige while also speaking to the mountain's renewed symbolic weight in the Meiji period as a national emblem. His Fuji prints sit alongside his war prints and historical subjects as part of a sustained engagement with Japanese identity at a moment when its terms were being publicly reformulated.