ITO TAKASHI (1894-1982)
Ontakesan or Mount Ontake (3,067m- 10,062ft)
Japan
In Mount Kiso Ontake, 1932, print,
The mountain
Ontakesan (3,067 m -10,062 ft) - in japanese 御嶽山 - also referred to as Mount Kiso Ontake (木曽御嶽山) or Mount Ontake, is the second highest volcano in Japan, after Fujiyama. Ontakesan is located around 100 km (62 mi) northeast of Nagoya, and around 200 km (125 mi) west of Tokyo, at the borders of Kiso and Ōtaki, Nagano Prefecture, and Gero, Gifu Prefecture.
The volcano has five crater lakes, with Ni no Ike at 2,905 m (9,531 ft) being the highest mountain lake in Japan. Ontake is a major sacred mountain, and following older shamanistic practices, actors and artists have gone to the mountain to put themselves into trances in order to get divine inspiration for their creative activities.
Ontakesan was thought to be inactive until October 1979, when it underwent a series of explosive phreatic eruptions (VEI 2), ejecting 200,000 tons of ash in total.[
There were minor non-explosive (VEI 0) phreatic eruptions in 1991 and 2007.
On Saturday, September 27, 2014, at around 11:53 a.m. Japan Standard Time (UTC +9), the volcano erupted with a VEI of 3 or 4. There were no significant earthquakes that might have warned authorities in the lead up to the phreatic eruption—caused by ground water flashing to steam in a hydrothermal explosion. The Ontakesan volcano eruption was an extremely rare phenomenon which made it difficult to take precautionary measures. At least 40 people were injured, and another 32 were believed to be missing. The Japan Self-Defense Forces began carrying out helicopter searches for missing people after the eruption.] On October 7, the total confirmed death count stood at 54.
The artist
Itō Takashi was born in Kama, Shizuoka Prefecture. He was one of the lesser known landscape artists who designed prints for the shin hanga publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō. Like several other print artists of this period, including Ito Shinsui (1898-1972) and Kawase Hasui (1883-1957), Ito Takashi studied painting under Kaburagi Kiyokata (1878-1973). He graduated from the Kyoto Koto Kogei (Higher Polytechnic) School of Designing where he studied Yoga (Western-style painting) with Totori Eiki (1873-1943), the Koto Kogei Gakko (Kyoto Higher Technical Art School) where he studied Nihonga (traditional Japanese-style painting) with Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942) and the Tokyo Academy of Fine Arts where he studied Nihonga with painter Yuki Somei (1875-1957). Takashi primarily worked as a painter and started making color woodblock prints in 1922, which he did intermittently throughout the rest of his career. He exhibited paintings at the Teiten. He designed about 85 woodblock prints from the early 1920's through 1965.Many of Takashi's early woodblock prints were only printed in one or two colors, because he was still experimenting with composition and design. These prints were probably not widely distributed. In 1923, a devastating earthquake struck Tokyo destroying the blocks for Takashi's early prints. However, at least one print, Ferry at Odai, Tokyo, was recarved by Watanabe's craftsmen and reprinted for many years afterward.
Many of Takashi's prints are idealistic images that emphasize the beauty of the unspoiled Japanese landscape. He enjoyed depicting dramatic seasonal and weather phenomena and often used bright, almost surreal colors to emphasize these changes. Occasionally people are part of his designs, but they are always incidental, solitary figures. A typical print, Takegawa River at Dawn, shows man living in harmony with nature. Takashi's prints evoke the Japan of old and represent the height of romantic shin hanga landscapes.
Watanabe describes Ito as an artist who experimented frequently with printing and overprinting, and that he also carved one design himself entitled Sinking Sun which illustrated the courtyard of Tokyo Imperial University (present-day University of Tokyo.) Sinking Sun was apparently not published by Watanabe and was distributed by Ito to members of the Edo-Picture Appreciation Society. Watanabe also states that at the time of the Great Kanto Earthquake in September 1923 a number of trial prints by Ito, done in conjunction with Watanabe's printers, were in progress. They were subsequently abandoned due to the destruction of his shop premises.