Snow at Kurama

Mount Kurama rises north of central Kyoto and is the seat of Kuramadera, a temple of mixed esoteric Buddhist and Shinto tradition founded in the eighth century. The mountain is known in winter for the heavy snow that gathers among its cedars and on the steep approach to the temple's main hall. Tokuriki's snow scene likely employs the conventions of yukige imagery in modern Japanese prints: broad reserved areas of unprinted washi to read as accumulated snow, dark sumi or indigo passages defining tree trunks and roof eaves, and bokashi gradations across the sky to suggest a low overcast. The composition fits within his long-running treatment of seasonal Kyoto views, which extended the meisho-e tradition of Hokusai and Hiroshige into the twentieth century. Tokuriki worked across both the shin-hanga and sosaku-hanga modes, and snow subjects of this kind, with their concentrated palette and emphatic tonal contrasts, draw on the technical strengths of mokuhanga in handling broad flat fields against finely carved detail.