Beronite Showa Shinzan

Showa Shinzan is the lava dome that rose from a wheat field in Hokkaido between 1943 and 1945, and Hashimoto returned to it as a subject more than once. The reference to belonite — needle-like volcanic crystals — suggests the print foregrounds the rough, mineral surface of the dome itself, with its scarred reddish-brown flanks set against a cooler sky. Hashimoto would likely have used coarse keyblock lines to convey the fissured rock, contrasting them with smoother color blocks for the surrounding terrain and atmosphere. The subject suits his architectural sensibility: a discrete, sharply defined mass anchoring the composition. Working in the sosaku-hanga tradition, he carved and printed the blocks himself, and his Hokkaido and Lake Toya prints from this period extend his vocabulary beyond the temples and castles for which he is better known into the realm of geological form.