Chikyu Greetings - Japanese Card - Mount Fuji II

Chikyu Greetings - Japanese Card - Mount Fuji II

A Japanese folded greeting card, published by Chikyu Greetings, with an illustration of Mount Fuji surrounded by cherry blossom. It is one of those images that condense the whole of Japan into a single glance.

The scene is set on a clear spring day, when the snow on the summit is beginning to melt and leaves the mountain with that characteristic streaked blue and white. In the foreground, cherry trees in full bloom frame the composition above and below in pale pink and white, leaving Fuji outlined at the centre. The composition is deliberately simple — mountain and blossom, nothing else — and that is precisely why it works: nothing competes with the two protagonists. Touches of gold scattered among the branches add shine and depth.

Mount Fuji (3,776 m) is the highest mountain in Japan and has been a sacred place and object of pilgrimage for centuries. In 2013 Unesco listed it as a World Heritage Site, not for its natural values but as a sacred place and source of artistic inspiration, recognising exactly what this card illustrates: the enormous mark it has left on Japanese painting, printmaking and poetry. Paired with sakura, the blossom that announces spring and whose brief beauty the Japanese celebrate each year with hanami, it forms the country's most recognisable pair of symbols.

The card is folded, opening like a book, and comes with an inner sheet printed with a message and a standard white envelope cut to size. The format is designed precisely for sending greetings abroad: the manufacturer itself recommends it for writing to people outside Japan.

Ideal as a greeting card, to accompany a gift, or to frame and keep as a small decorative print once it has been read.

About Chikyu Greetings. Chikyu Greetings, based in Asakusabashi (Tokyo), is a Japanese stationery publisher whose "Chikyu" brand goes back to the Meiji era, around 130 years ago. It specialises in greeting cards and paper goods — envelopes, letter paper, pochibukuro, stickers and Japanese-style bookmarks — with a style the company itself describes as basic, warm designs with a touch of whimsy.