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Imperial Palace and Mount Fuji from the series Twenty-Five Views of Mount Fuji: A Woodblock Collection

Jōkata Kaiseki (1882-1966)
 

Japanese Color Woodblock Print 

The Imperial Palace and Mount Fuji

from the series Twenty-Five Views of Mount Fuji:

A Woodblock Collection

by Jōkata Kaiseki, 1931

Benten Island, Lake Hamana and Mount Fuji from the series Twenty-Five Views of Mount Fuji: A Woodblock Collection

IHL Cat. #1893

About This Print

One of twenty-five prints in the series Twenty-Five Views of Mount Fuji: A Woodblock Collection, published by the artist in 1931. In this print we see the Imperial Palace grounds in the foreground (with the palace's outer moat in the immediate foreground), the National Diet Building, which would have been under construction at the time, behind the palace grounds on the left and a very white Mount Fuji standing as a beacon in the background. Cars and people dot the scene and hazy clouds, reddened by the setting sun, streak the sky.

About This Series

As mentioned in the artist's biography, there is some confusion about whether Jōkata created one or two series of prints with views of Mt. Fuji.  While a number of sources refer to a ca. 1929 twelve print series of views of Fuji, the only documentation I've seen is for the 1931 twenty-five print series, which includes all twelve prints supposedly making up the 1929 series.  While the author quoted below references the twelve print 1929 series, the words equally apply to the 1931 series.

In the 1920s and 1930s the constituent parts of old and new Japan often collided.  As with writers of the period, print artists frequently focused on this friction between the past and present.  Jōkata Kaiseki's twelve print series Views of Fuji from 1929 ... sights a symbol of traditional Japan through the lens of modernity.  [A]irplanes and power poles are placed alongside such traditional emblems as farmhouses and rural villages.  Kaiseki, an artist known only through this series, was likely familiar with the ukiyo-e tradition.  By "hiding" Mt. Fuji in his compositions, he alludes to Hokusai's classic Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji (Fuji sanjūrokkei) of 1828-1833 in which Mt. Fuji is sometimes viewed through a barrel or from under an arched wooden bridge.  Kaiseki's Mt. Fuji, a symbol of traditional Japan, exists in a world which contains modern elements.1

For more information on the series see the section titled "The Kaiseki Mount Fuji Prints" on the artist's bio page Jōkata Kaiseki (1882-1966).

1 "The Cultural Landscape: Modernity and its Ideological Reaction," by Alexandra J. Marmion appearing in Light in Darkness: Women in Japanese Prints of Early Shōwa (1926-1945), Kendall H. Brown, et. al., Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, 1996, p. 21.

Print Details

 IHL Catalog #1893
 Title Imperial Palace and Mount Fuji  宮城と富士
 [title as given in the table of contents accompanying the entire series]
 Alternate Title: 皇居からの富士
 Series Twenty-Five Views of Mount Fuji: Woodblock Collection
 木版画集 富士二十五景
 Artist 
 Jōkata Kaiseki (1882-1966)
 Signature 
塊石漢寫 Kaiseki
 Seal sealed 塊石 Kaiseki [see image above]
 Publication Date 1931
 Edition 
 Publisher self-published under the name Kaiseki Print Publishing Society  塊石版画刊行会
 Printer unknown
 Carver Kawatsura Yoshio (1880-1963)
 Impression excellent
 Colors excellent
 Condition excellent 
 Genre sosaku-hanga (creative print)
 Miscellaneous 
 Format dai-ōban
 H x W Paper 11 1/8 x 14 3/8 in. (28.6 x 36.5 cm)
 H x W Image 10 1/8 x 13 7/8 in. (25.7 x 35.2 cm)
 Collections This Print 
 Reference Literature 
last revision:
12/23/2018