TSUKIOKA YOSHITOSHI / 月岡 芳年 (1839-1892)
Mount Ashigara / 足柄山 (1,215m- 3,978ft)
Japan
In Ashigarayama no tsuki u (Moon over Mount Ashigara), 1889.
The mountain
Mount Ashigara (足柄山) (1,215m- 3,978ft) , also known as Mount Kintoki (金時山), is the northernmost peak of the Hakone caldera, on the border of Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures, in the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park in Japan. Ashigara is not a remnant of the collapse of the old Hakone volcano itself, but rather a parasitic cone growing from its flank.
Mount Ashigara is the legendary birthplace of Kintarō.
The kanji of the mountain's name mean "Leg Handle Mountain"
The artist
Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (月岡 芳年) also named Taiso Yoshitoshi (大蘇 芳年) was a Japanese artist.
He is widely recognized as the last great master of the ukiyo-e genre of woodblock printing and painting. He is also regarded as one of the form's greatest innovators. His career spanned two eras – the last years of Edo period Japan, and the first years of modern Japan following the Meiji Restoration. Like many Japanese, Yoshitoshi was interested in new things from the rest of the world, but over time he became increasingly concerned with the loss of many aspects of traditional Japanese culture, among them traditional woodblock printing.
By the end of his career, Yoshitoshi was in an almost single-handed struggle against time and technology. As he worked on in the old manner, Japan was adopting Western mass reproduction methods like photography and lithography. Nonetheless, in a Japan that was turning away from its own past, he almost singlehandedly managed to push the traditional Japanese woodblock print to a new level, before it effectively died with him.
His reputation has only continued to grow, both in the West, and among younger Japanese, and he is now almost universally recognized as the greatest Japanese artist of his era.
