Labyrinth Red Fuji

Mount Fuji is Japan's national icon. The highest mountain in Japan, a centre of worship for centuries, and celebrated in art and poetry from the earliest times, this extraordinary mountain and its peerless beauty still attract pilgrims and tourists.

Fuji-san, as the mountain is known in Japan, is best known in the West through Hokusai's series 'The Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji', produced between 1823 and 1829. Since then series on Fuji, from different angles, at different times of day, have been popular with painters, printmakers and photographers. The short dramatic time when Fuji glows red under the rays of a setting sun is particularly sought.

Takabe, who has been producing prints of varied subject matter and style since the 1960s, ironically balances red Fuji against the golden sphere of a sun surrounded by a whole spectrum of colour. The sun is the archetypal symbol of Japan, from the earliest times identified as Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess who is the ancestral divinity of Japan.

Takabe now lives in Kanagawa Prefecture. She was born in Wakayama and educated at the Women's College of Fine Arts.

Jackie Menzies, Contemporary Japanese Prints: The Urban Bonsai, 1992, pg. 57, 92.