Red fuji

"Red Fuji" places Nishida in direct dialogue with one of the most enduring images in Japanese art: Hokusai's "South Wind, Clear Sky" (Gaifu kaisei), commonly known as Akafuji, from the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. The phenomenon depicted is observable — under particular atmospheric conditions in late summer and early autumn, the mountain's slopes catch dawn light and glow a deep red. In mokuhanga, achieving this coloration requires careful registration of multiple red and brown blocks, often with [bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) gradients to suggest the modulation of light across the cone. The composition typically allows the mountain to dominate the picture plane, with sky and foreground reduced to supporting registers. For Nishida, who has returned to Mount Fuji repeatedly across his career, the Red Fuji subject represents an opportunity to engage with the canonical image of Japanese landscape printmaking while inflecting it with a contemporary sensibility.