Mt Fuji

Without a specified viewpoint, this print likely belongs to one of Tokuriki's Fuji series — he produced more than one set explicitly modelled on Hokusai's Thirty-Six Views — in which the mountain is treated from a range of locations, seasons, and times of day. A close-in view of the mountain itself would emphasise the cone's distinctive profile, with snow rendered as the unprinted white of the [washi](/glossary/washi) paper and the volcanic body built up through layered indigo and grey blocks. [Bokashi](/glossary/bokashi) shading on the slopes and in the surrounding sky carries the atmospheric weight of the composition. The simplicity of an isolated Fuji view places considerable demands on the printer: every gradation, every registration mark, every depth of colour reads against the otherwise sparse field. Tokuriki's lifelong return to Fuji as a subject reflected both commercial demand from post-war collectors, particularly American buyers, and his own attachment to a motif that had defined Japanese landscape printmaking since the Edo period.