~ W a y m a r k s ~: 100 Views of Mount Fuji

The Great Wave, Kanagawa - Hokusai (British Museum)

There are certain threads which run through our lives. Interests which never seem to diminish with the passing of time. If anything, they tend to get stronger and develop deeper meanings for us as we get older. My love of Japanese art is one such thread. I first encountered Japanese paintings and prints when visiting the British Museum as a child. I remember at the time I bought some postcards of prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige in the museum shop, postcards which I treasured for many years thereafter. I’d often look at them and sometimes I’d try to imitate their style in my own pencil drawings.

View of Fuji from Hakone - by Hiroshige (British Museum)

Exactly twenty years ago, during the summer of 2001, there was a small exhibition in the BM’s Japan gallery titled, 100 Views of Mount Fuji. I lost count of how many times I went to look at it during my lunch breaks. I found it mesmerising. It showcased works drawn from the BM’s collection dating from the 17^th century to the present – from the traditional schools of Kanō, Sumiyoshi, and Shijō to later and more personal interpretations by individual artists, such as Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige. The exhibition catalogue, by Timothy Clark, succinctly describes the undying fascination for this enormous yet graceful and compelling landmark: “Mount Fuji is renowned worldwide as Japan’s highest and most perfectly shaped mountain. Serving as a potent metaphor in classical love poetry and revered since ancient times by mountain-climbing sects of both Shintō and Buddhist faiths, Fuji has taken on many roles in pre-modern Japan.”

A Pair of Hanging Scroll Paintings of Fuji - by Hiroshige ?III (British Museum)

The beauty of Mount Fuji is truly majestic in whichever season you view it. I’ve seen it in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The first time I saw it though was from a high-rise hotel in Tokyo’s north-eastern neighbourhood of Ueno in October 2003, just two years after the 100 Views of Mount Fuji exhibition. It was a tiny but perfectly white, snow-clad triangle glimpsed in the far distance on the horizon above the vast metropolis of buildings. I saw it on the last day of my first trip to Japan, and it felt like a final gift from the Gods, marking the end of a wonderful journey. I was very fortunate to have Tim Clark as my travelling companion on that first journey. We were accompanying a BM exhibition to Tokyo’s Metropolitan Museum. On our arrival we’d had a long wait at Narita Airport before loading the trucks and finally rolling out onto the road. Jetlag was getting the better of me. I dozed off while the truck was motoring along, lulled by the motion of the wheels on the road. Tim gently nudged me awake, saying: “Sorry to wake you, but I’m sure you won’t want to miss this.” I looked out of the window to find we were still driving along the highway, but now the road was arching gracefully up onto the Rainbow Bridge, crossing Tokyo harbour. The bridge, as befits its name, was lit up brightly in the night sky, changing slowly through a myriad cycle of multifarious colours. And there, beyond the bridge and the Odaiba Ferris Wheel, I could now see the glittering cityscape of Tokyo itself. Tim was right. It was a stunning and unforgettable introduction to the city which I’d read and heard so much about. It was probably no surprise that I fell irrevocably in love with the place during that first trip. The fact I came down with a streaming cold at the end of our time there didn’t dampen my enthusiasm at all.

Biru no tanima ni - by Hagiwara Hideo (British Museum)

My second trip to Japan a few months later was when I managed to get much closer to Mount Fuji. I’d read about Kawaguchi-ko in my guidebook and it seemed like the perfect spot to get some scenic photos of Mount Fuji with the five lakes area in the foreground. Back in 2001, I’d spent hours studying Tim’s exhibition catalogue, and I’d turned my own hand to painting views of Mount Fuji in watercolours. Some were modelled on the paintings and prints in Tim’s exhibition, others were more free-form efforts, inspired by the styles and schools he described. One painting which evidently struck me was a view painted by Niwa Kagen (Yoshitoki), titled ‘Mount Fuji Seen from Hara, Fourth month, 1770.’ Kagen’s painting looks perhaps more Western than Japanese, which is surprising (as Tim’s book notes) given that Kagen’s later works are much more influenced by Chinese styles of painting. It’s thought that this view was probably painted from life while Kagen was travelling along the Tōkaid ō, one of Edo-era Japan’s main trunk roads, from his native city of Nagoya. My version differs in the foreground, where I’ve added a scattering of trees and used more green tones in the landscape at the foot of the mountain, attempting to echo the styles of later artists such as Ishibashi Richō, Oki Kangaku, and Suzuki Nanrei.

A View of Fuji from Kawaguchi-ko - by Hokusai (British Museum)

At the time I painted this picture I never dreamed I’d ever go to Japan, at least not so soon after I’d painted it. I’d always hoped I get the chance to go someday, so when I boarded a bus at Shinjuku during the Christmas and New Year holidays of 2003-2004, and found myself journeying alone out to the foothills of this stunningly sublime mountain which I’d seen so much of in Tim’s book, life seemed to have heeded my heart and effortlessly followed my dreams, magically taking me along too, transporting me there. When I got off the bus, just as I was about to set off, an old man who’d been a fellow passenger hailed me and asked where I was going. In a mixture of my broken Japanese and his broken English I managed to convey I was there to view Mount Fuji. He asked if I was staying the night here in Kawaguchi-ko, or heading back to Tokyo the same day. I said I was heading back later that day, and so he motioned for me to follow him. He then sought out the bus stop I’d need to return to and checked the timetable, telling me what time the buses departed and most importantly when the last one would leave. This was exceptionally kind and very thoughtful of him, I realised, because he knew better than I did that the last bus of the day would be leaving in just a couple of hours’ time. If I missed it, I’d be stuck there for the night! – I thanked him very much and we both bowed low and then went our separate ways.

I took the cable car up the side of a small hill, called Mount Tenjo, overlooking the town and the lake. There I managed to get some stunning photos of the wintry sun setting beside Mount Fuji in a crystalline blue sky. I had a 35mm film SLR camera with me, plus the first digital camera I’d ever owned, which I’d bought just a week or two before in Tokyo’s electric town, Akihabara. Reviewing some of the photos I’d taken with this little digital marvel in the darkness during the return bus ride to Shinjuku, I saw I’d managed to get some decent shots, firstly through the bus window whilst on the highway travelling out and also at the top of Mount Tenjo too. My 35mm photos later came out rather well too. These images seemed to live up to those I’d seen and studied so intently in Tim’s 100 Views book. In my mind, while sitting on the bus, driving through the night back to Tokyo, I recalled the small painting I’d done after Niwa Kagen’s and I decided that the smaller peak in my rendering of the scene was perhaps a foreshadowing of this trip to Mount Tenjo, as if it were fated that one day – this day, in fact – I’d reach this particular place, a region far distant from home, where my imagination had been transformed into my present reality.

My painting of Fuji, after Niwa Kagen - by Tim Chamberlain, 2001

View of Fuji from Hara - by Niwa Kagen, 1770 (British Museum)

I have seen Mount Fuji many times since during my subsequent travels to Japan, either from the highway or from the bullet train, or from other tall buildings in Tokyo and the countryside thereabouts, during the times when off-and-on I’ve been staying or living in Tokyo for extended periods. But I never imagined that one day I’d be able to see Mount Fuji from the balcony of my very own home here. A home in which my own little painting of this magnificent mountain now hangs upon the wall. Yet each morning and evening I make a point of parting the curtains to see if Fuji-san is visible and not hidden by clouds. It’s always such a magical sight to behold when the sky is clear, I love to stand on the balcony and gaze at it. Fuji often seems to hang in the air, emerging from the sky with the most elegant of lines as if ever so lightly traced by the sharp edge of a soft brush, just like in the paintings and prints in Tim’s exhibition which I’d first seen exactly twenty years ago back in London. I was very lucky to have travelled to Japan that first time with Tim, and again on several subsequent occasions too. He understood and shared my affinity for Japan, he also encouraged me to learn the language. Tim retired from the BM last year, and although I told him during our first trip together to Japan how much I’d enjoyed his exhibition, I’m not sure if I myself really knew at that time just how deeply his 100 Views of Mount Fuji had affected and influenced me, because looking back on that time now, I can see Mount Fuji has certainly remained a constant presence, abiding with me ever since.

View of Mount Fuji from our balcony, 2021

Like the sacred ropes seen in certain Shintō shrines here in Japan, that eternal perfect view of Mount Fuji has become a thread running through my life – tugging me back to the past, now anchoring me to the present, and very likely pulling me towards the future. Each time I look at Fuji-san, I thank the Gods (the Shintō Kami) and my lucky stars that I have been so fortunate to have found myself allied to this great mountain, like a totem. Perhaps, in some transcendental sense – Mount Fuji is synonymous with the Japanese character 縁 – ‘en.’ Meaning a sense of fate or destiny, something unseen yet strong which joins and binds two living things to one another – a bond which cannot easily be broken. Such are the threads which run on and on through our lives, after all, leading us wherever we will ourselves to go.