Taisho Pond, Kamikochi Tableland — 上高地渓谷

Taisho Pond, Kamikochi Tableland presents one of the most photographed and painted locations in the Japanese Alps. Taisho Pond was formed in 1915 when a volcanic eruption of nearby Mount Yake dammed the Azusa River, creating a shallow lake in which the skeletal trunks of drowned trees stand as ghostly sentinels. Behind this haunting foreground, the snow-capped peaks of the Hotaka mountain range rise to over 3,000 meters.

Shuho's oban woodblock print captures the eerie beauty of this relatively young geological feature, where death and regeneration coexist in a single view. The dead trees, bleached white by decades of submersion and exposure, create stark vertical elements against the horizontal plane of the water and the jagged skyline of the mountains beyond. The Kamikochi highland valley, accessible only during the summer and autumn months, offered Shuho a landscape unlike anything in lowland Japan, and the print conveys the alpine clarity and scale of this remote mountain setting.