Myōkō Hot Springs

Myōkō Hot Springs, a 1955 color woodblock print by Toshi Yoshida, portrays the volcanic onsen district nestled at the foot of Mount Myōkō in Niigata Prefecture, a long-favored mountain resort in northern Japan. Toshi Yoshida, working from the Yoshida studio in Tokyo founded by his father Hiroshi Yoshida, treats the scene with the same attentiveness to atmosphere and place that defined the studio's landscape practice. Snow-laden roofs, the rising steam of the hot springs, and the bulk of the surrounding peaks are built up from successive blocks, each color applied by hand in the traditional manner. By 1955, Toshi Yoshida was navigating between two print cultures: the collaborative [shin-hanga](/glossary/shin-hanga) model his father had refined, in which a designer worked with professional carvers and printers, and the [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) ethos of self-carved and self-printed creative prints. Myōkō Hot Springs demonstrates how he reconciled the two, retaining the Yoshida studio's discipline of pigment control and registration while pursuing subjects that emphasized direct observation. The Art Institute of Chicago, which holds an impression of the print (artwork 86359), records it as a representative example of Toshi Yoshida's mid-century landscape work. The composition rewards close looking: the warm interior glow of inns, the cool wash of mountain air, and the structural rhythm of the buildings together register a specific moment at a specific place, the Yoshida studio's enduring strength.