Sacred Mountains 10

The tenth print in Hiroshima's Sacred Mountains series, dated more than a decade after the early entries, indicates a long-running engagement with reijin — the holy peaks of Japan, including Fuji, Tate, Haku, Ontake, and the mountain ranges of Shugendo pilgrimage. Mezzotint suits the subject in a way that distinguishes Hiroshima's treatment from the woodblock meisho-e lineage: instead of the hard outline and graded bokashi of a Hokusai or Hiroshige Fuji, the mountain emerges from a continuously rocked black through selective burnishing, so that ridge, snowfield, and surrounding mist are differentiated by tone alone. The 2024 sheet shows Hiroshima continuing to develop the series in his seventies, with the technical command of plate preparation and printing that comes from decades of contract work for other artists alongside his own production at his Tokyo press.