Mount Fuji

This large picture by the Nanga painter Yokoi Kinkoku shows a view from Suruga Bay of Mount Fuji with the Miho Pine Strand in the foreground. It is accompanied by a quatrain brushed by the artist himself:

Alone it towers above the white clouds.
Who can help feeling the chill of the snow vapor?
Viewed from any angle, it has no front or back,
just erupts from midair to catch people’s eyes.
--trans. Miyeko Murase and Shiyee Liu

Much of what we know about Kinkoku's life and career can be gleaned from his autobiography, the Kinkoku Dōjin go-ichidai ki. Born in Ōtsu, a town near Kyoto on the shores of Lake Biwa in Ōmi Province, Kinkoku became a Buddhist monk as a young man and in adulthood practiced extreme austerities as a follower of the syncretic Shugendō sect. Traveling widely and never tied to a single teacher, Kinkoku drew from a variety of sources for his painting but is most closely associated with the great Yosa Buson (1716–1783), whose influence is apparent throughout Kinkoku's body of work. Although he never actually studied directly with Buson, so close to Buson's style was Kinkoku's that he gained the nickname "Buson of Ōmi Province" (Ōmi Buson).

The rightmost of the two seals Kinkoku affixed to this painting, which consists of nine Chinese characters that can be translated as, "At the age of fifty-five I devoted myself to learning" 吾五十有五而志於學, is a playful allusion to the first line of a passage in chapter 2 of the Analects, in which Confucius describes his lifelong process of self-cultivation: "At the age of fifteen, I devoted myself to learning. At thirty, I became established. At forty, I no longer doubted. At fifty, I was fully committed to the mandate of heaven. At sixty, nothing I heard upset me. At seventy, I followed by heart without breaking any rule."