Mountain Pass with Trees

This tall hanging scroll in the Freer Gallery of Art Study Collection records a pass winding through a forested mountain region. The lower foreground is dominated by a stand of tall, scarred conifers — almost certainly Japanese cedar or larch — whose trunks Hokkai treats with the careful attention of a trained forester, observing the bark texture, the upward-sweeping crowns, and the underbrush at their bases. Beyond the trees a switchback path climbs toward a high ridge that dissolves in atmospheric mist. The work demonstrates the way Hokkai used the vertical kakemono format to register sequential depth — foreground, middle ground, distance — without recourse to Western linear perspective, instead relying on the literati convention of mist, scale shifts, and tonal grading.