Onchi Koshiro: A View of Mount Unzen (Unzen ikkei 雲仙一景) (RESERVED)

Artist:  Onchi Kôshirô (1891-1955)

Title:A View of  Mount Unzen (Unzen ikkei 雲仙一景) Date: 1938

Series: 100 Views of New Japan 新日本百景 (Shin Nihon Hyakkei)

A deceptively peaceful view beckons in shades of green; Mount Unzen, located in Nagasaki prefecture in Kyushu, is actually an active stratovolcano, erupting most recently in 1991 in a catastrophic way. Situated near the volcano are hot springs, some bubbling from surrounding barren fields known as the Hells (jigoku), which contain steam vents, bubbling mud pits and fumaroles. With this in mind we can guess that the cloud in the middle of the design is actually rising steam, and the two other clouds that hug the hills may also be from steam vents. We see a shapely tree in the foreground, anchored in and becoming part of the mountain.  This area is today a national park.  There is unique texture in the green of the hills that comes from an intentional application of the green pigment, characteristic of Onchi’s sophisticated approaches to both design and color.

As noted by Smith (1990): "Following the successful completion of the series 'One Hundred New Views of Tokyo', to which Onchi was the most important contributor, this even more ambitious series was begun in 1938 as an act of confidence by the Creative Print Movement under Onchi's by now generally admitted leadership, but had reached only no. 39 by 1941 when it had to be discontinued because of the expansion of war... Of Onchi's many achievements perhaps the greatest is his unerring colour sense, well demonstrated in this subtle view of a Kyushu spa resort."

Onchi was the  most prominent of the artists contributing to this series. The Honolulu Museum of Art possesses the largest collection of prints by Onchi outside of Japan, and it recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of the artist’s passing with a retrospective in 2025. Number 36 in the series.

Thirty-three artists contributed to this planned series of one hundred works, all members of the Nihon Hanga Kyôkai (Japan Woodblock Print Association). The first work was produced in December of 1938, and the series was halted after publishing  thirty-nine works, in 1941. There were two artist/editors of the set: numbers 1-9 were by Fujimori Shizuo and Maekawa Senpan took over for numbers 10-39. According to the Art Gallery of New South Wales website, publication of this series was stopped by the Japanese authorities during WWII because they feared that the interior of Japan would become known to its enemies. This would not be surprising given the paranoia of wartime, but it is also probable that there were other factors, including limited supplies and artists conscripted into the war machine. The areas of “New Japan” in this series which are no longer part of today’s Japan make it an interesting artistic time capsule of the period in terms of Japan’s early 20th century expansion.

The series title is stamped on the right margin in red, and the name of the artist’s group “Nihon Hanga Kyokai sen” ("Selected by the Japanese Print Association") is stamped lower left. 

Condition: Excellent impression, color and condition. Never framed. The artist’s name has been written in pencil lower right margin, but it is not known if this was written by the artist himself.

Literature: See British Museum website, Art Gallery of NSW. 

 Dimensions: 25.5 x 33 cm

SKU: SNH013