Artist: Tokuriki Tomikichirō 徳力富吉郎 (1902–1999), signed Tomikichirō saku with red seal Title: Motosuko sōshun 本栖湖早春 — "Lake Motosu, Early Spring" (No. 1 in the series) Series: Fuji Sanjūrokkei 富士三十六景 ("Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji") Edition: Later Uchida printing from the original blocks — open edition, without series title or margin seals Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga) on washi Format: Horizontal ōban, approx. 27 × 40 cm Genre: Shin-hanga landscape ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Paper & condition Excellent colours and impression. Clean paper. Excellent overall. Full margins as shown; not backed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- About the print The opening design of Tokuriki's Fuji series, and one of the coolest in temperature of the thirty-six. Fuji rises snow-mantled against a clear turquoise sky, its lower slopes streaked with grey rock, while the still water of Lake Motosu spreads across the whole lower half of the sheet in graded blues. Between viewer and mountain Tokuriki sets a screen of leafless saplings, a few carrying small scarlet berries — the single warm note in an otherwise entirely blue-and-white composition, and the detail that gives the design its "early spring" title. The device is pure Hokusai in descent — the sacred mountain glimpsed past a foreground motif — but the handling is unmistakably Shōwa: flat colour fields, careful bokashi grading in the sky and water, and a graphic clarity closer to modern poster design than to Edo landscape. It remains one of the more popular sheets from the series. --------------------------------------------------- About the artist Tokuriki Tomikichirō came from an old Kyoto family of artists and became one of the leading printmakers of twentieth-century Kyoto, active across both the self-carved sōsaku-hanga movement and publisher-led shin-hanga production. He worked until his death in 1999 at ninety-seven, and taught a generation of younger printmakers, including Western students. His Fuji series remains his most sought-after achievement among collectors.