Mt. Unzen (with original folio)

Mount Unzen on the Shimabara Peninsula of Kyushu, presented with its original folio wrapping. The volcano—site of catastrophic eruptions throughout Japanese history, most recently in the 1990s—rises from a landscape of hot springs and forested slopes that Tagawa Ken translates into carved woodblock form. The inclusion of the original folio adds a tactile, archival dimension to the print, preserving the way it was originally stored and presented. Unzen's dramatic geology, with its sulfurous fumaroles and scarred terrain, offers a subject that tests a printmaker's ability to convey both the beauty and the latent violence of volcanic landscape.