Mountain in Izumo

Izumo, in western Shimane Prefecture, was Hiratsuka's home region — he was born in Matsue in 1895 — and the province carries dense mythological associations as the setting of much of the Kojiki and the seat of Izumo Taisha. The print likely depicts one of the volcanic or sacred peaks of the region, possibly Mount Sanbe or one of the ridgelines visible from Lake Shinji. Hiratsuka's landscape mokuhanga reduces the mountain to broad black masses against the white [washi](/glossary/washi), with the gouge work registering as the texture of forested slopes and weather-cut ridges rather than as conventional Western chiaroscuro. Unlike the [meisho-e](/glossary/meisho-e) tradition of named-place views in [ukiyo-e](/glossary/ukiyo-e), where the place is often legible by famous landmarks, Hiratsuka's Izumo prints rely on silhouette and a [sosaku-hanga](/glossary/sosaku-hanga) directness of cutting, treating the local terrain with the same seriousness he brought to temple architecture and Buddhist sculpture elsewhere in his output.