Mountain Village in Tamba(769)

Tamba — the mountainous region straddling northern Hyogo and central Kyoto Prefecture — is one of the heartlands of surviving Japanese minka architecture, with isolated hamlets of thatched farmhouses tucked into folded valleys. The print likely depicts a cluster of such houses set against rising forested slopes, the steep mountain backdrop pressing the village into the foreground. Tanaka travelled extensively through Tamba during the 1970s and 80s, sketching what remained of its traditional building stock; the high catalogue number (769) places this among his later, mature works. Compositionally, mountain villages allowed him to combine the two motifs he most often returned to — the individual minka and the enclosing landscape — into a single integrated view, with the irregular geometry of roofs nesting beneath the larger triangular forms of the hills. The image belongs to his enduring project of preserving the visual record of the inland Kansai countryside.