Mount Fuji — The Symbol of Japan

At the age of twenty, Itchiku saw a fragment of fabric at the National Museum of Tokyo. Tsujigahana, which flourished in the Muromachi era and disappeared at the beginning of the Edo period, was a dyeing technique shrouded in mystery—its true form known to no one, a phantom art.

Instead of merely restoring it, he decided to revive the technique. Forty years passed from that decision to its completion. At sixty, he named it after himself—“Itchiku Tsujigahana”—and presented it to the world.

At seventy, he began his final cycle—“Kokyo.” His vision was to unite Japan’s four seasons in a single composition of eighty kimono, with Mount Fuji at the center.

In 2003, leaving twenty-nine kimono unfinished, Itchiku passed away. The Fuji cycle remained incomplete.

In the museum on the shore of Lake Kawaguchi, you see the very Fuji the master wished to reveal. Instead of pigments, its colors are changed daily by clouds and light. Here, its incompleteness seems a special form of completion.