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 paper and the volcanic body built up through layered indigo and grey blocks. 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.