Landscape in Daisen from Kila-Matsue

A view of Mt. Daisen, the dormant volcano that dominates the Tottori-Shimane border, observed from the vicinity of Kila in Matsue, Hiratsuka's hometown on the San'in coast. Daisen rises to roughly 1,729 meters and presents a distinctive western profile sometimes called Hoki-Fuji for its conical resemblance to Mt. Fuji. Hiratsuka returned repeatedly to the landscape of his birthplace, and prints of this type generally place the mountain as a single broad silhouette behind layered foreground elements: rice paddies, farm buildings, or the line of Lake Shinji. The composition would typically be carved to exploit strong figure-ground reversals, with the mountain itself either reserved as unprinted washi against a worked sky or rendered as a solid black mass crowning a brighter middle ground. As with most of his mature mokuhanga, the print was designed, cut, and impressed by Hiratsuka himself in keeping with the sosaku-hanga creed. The Matsue and Daisen subjects collectively form a regional autobiography running through his catalogue of more than 3,000 prints.