Man Who Returned From the Summit

Man Who Returned From the Summit—the climber descending after achieving the highest point—carries the specific quality of completion and the particular emotional state that follows extreme physical effort in high places. The returned man is not the triumphant hero but the exhausted, changed person who has been somewhere most people cannot go and is now returning to the ordinary world, carrying the experience as invisible cargo. Azechi's figure shows this in the body's posture rather than the face's expression.