Takenoko - Yama (Bamboo Mountain)

A larger compositional treatment of bamboo, the suffix Yama (mountain) indicating a hill or mountain face densely covered in bamboo rather than a single shoot. Where the 2006 Takenoko mezzotint focused on the close detail of emerging shoots, this 2010 print steps back to a grove or hillside, the vertical culms reading as a screen of repeated lights and darks against the rocked black ground. Mezzotint registers the slightly waxy reflectance of bamboo well: the burnished culm reads as a vertical stripe of light recovered from darkness, with the shadowed spaces between trunks left near solid black. The tag pairing of Trees and Mountains suggests an exterior landscape view rather than a botanical study, placing the print closer to Hiroshima's Sacred Mountains line of work while retaining the bamboo subject of his earlier still-life studies. Bamboo carries strong associations in Japanese visual tradition with resilience, seasonal renewal, and the literati landscape vocabulary.