HIROSHI YOSHIDA / 吉田 博 (1876-1950),
Mount Tsurugi or Tokushima / 剣山 (1,954m - 6, 413ft)
Japan
In Tsurugi san, woodblock Print, c. 1936
The mountain
Mount Tsurugi or Tokushima (1,954m - 6, 413ft) ( in japanese 剣山 Tsurugi-san), meaning sword, is a mountain on the border of Miyoshi, Mima and Naka in Tokushima Prefecture, Japan. This mountain is one of the 100 Famous Japanese Mountains. Mount Tsurugi is the second highest mountain on the island of Shikoku, and also the second highest mountain west of Mount Haku, which is on the border of Ishikawa and Gifu prefectures in central Japan.
Mount Tsurugi is an important object of worship in this region and one of the centers of Shugendō, a sect of mixture of Shintoism and Buddhism. On the top of the mountain, there is a small shrine called ‘Tsurugi Jinja’. The area around Mount Tsurugi is a major part of Tsurugi Quasi-National Park.
The painter
Hiroshi Yoshida / 吉田 博(not to be confused with Toshi Yoshida) was born in 1876. He began his artistic training with his adoptive father in Kurume, Fukuoka prefecture. Around the age of twenty, he left Kurume to study with Soritsu Tamura in Kyoto, subsequently moving to Tokyo and the tutelage of Shotaro Koyama. Yoshida studied Western-style painting, winning many exhibition prizes and making several trips to the United States, Europe and North Africa selling his watercolors and oil paintings. In 1902, he played a leading role in the organization of the Meiji Fine Arts Society into the Pacific Painting Association. His work was featured in the exhibitions of the state-sponsored Bunten and Teiten. While highly successful as an oil painter and watercolor artist, Yoshida turned to printmaking upon learning of the Western world’s infatuation with ukiyo-e.
Following the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, Yoshida embarked on a tour of the United States and Europe, painting and selling his work. When he returned to Japan in 1925, he started his own workshop, specializing in landscapes inspired both by his native country and his travels abroad. Yoshida often worked through the entire process himself: designing the print, carving his own blocks, and printing his work. His career was temporarily interrupted by his sojourn as a war correspondent in Manchuria during the Pacific War. Although he designed his last print in 1946, Yoshida continued to paint with oils and watercolors up until his death in 1950.
Yoshida was widely traveled and knowledgeable of Western aesthetics, yet maintained an allegiance to traditional Japanese techniques and traditions. Attracted by the calmer moments of nature, his prints breathe coolness, invite meditation, and set a soft, peaceful mood. All of his lifetime prints are signed “Hiroshi Yoshida” in pencil and marked with a jizuri (self-printed) seal outside of the margin. Within the image, most prints are signed “Yoshida” with brush and ink beside a red “Hiroshi” seal.
2019 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau
