Fresh praise of Fuji

Mt. Fuji's representation in print is among the most established subjects in Japanese visual culture, with Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views and Hiroshige's series setting the canonical references. Onchi's 'Fresh praise of Fuji' announces in its title a deliberate effort to renew the subject — a fresh engagement rather than another iteration of the established iconography. The treatment likely reduces the mountain toward its essential triangular silhouette, working against the detailed atmospheric naturalism of Edo-period and shin-hanga Fuji depictions. As a sosaku-hanga work it is hand-carved and hand-printed by the artist, with baren marks and registration variations distinguishing it from workshop production. Fuji appeared throughout the careers of twentieth-century printmakers as both genuine subject and meta-commentary on the woodblock tradition; depicting Fuji is unavoidably a statement about one's relationship to that tradition. Onchi's modernist approach renders the mountain as compositional geometry rather than topographical likeness, treating it as a structural element within a formally constructed image.